


Servants of the Pharaoh

by natsinator



Series: A Wheel Inside a Wheel [4]
Category: Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon-Typical Homophobia, F/M, Gen, Imperial!Yang, M/M, Multi, Roleswap, Secret Identity, Slow Burn, Strategy & Tactics, This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender, don't worry about that straight ship. just don't worry about it. it's not... yeah.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 173,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23878408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natsinator/pseuds/natsinator
Summary: “Unfortunately, Commander, on that point you might be wrong,” Yang said, smiling a little. “I’m a very lazy man, and I have no great desire to provide distinguished services to the Goldenbaum dynasty.”“And yet you are one of the Goldenbaum dynasty’s servants.”“I shall strive to be a humble one.”“Why is that?”“It seems strange that I would need to explain why I dislike the idea of being an effective weapon of war.”“Sub-lieutenant,” Oberstein said, “you stand out by virtue of your being. It might be to your benefit to be above reproach in your actions, which by necessity means being successful.”Yang scratched his head. “Maybe.”“But perhaps all of this is dangerous talk,” Oberstein said.-----------------------This is part 3 of a longer work (roleswap AU). It is highly recommended that you read at least Part 1 (Speaking in Tongues) first. OVA canon is followed on a case by case basis. Tags/characters/pairings/etc will be updated as chapters are posted.
Relationships: Evangelin Mittermeyer/Wolfgang Mittermeyer, Oskar von Reuenthal/Yang Wenli, Siegfried Kircheis/Martin Bufholtz, Wolfgang Mittermeyer/Oskar von Reuenthal, Yang Wenli/Magdalena von Westfalen
Series: A Wheel Inside a Wheel [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650067
Comments: 345
Kudos: 75





	1. Running up That Road, Running up That Hill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the warnings for this series have changed from "No archive warnings apply" to "Creator chose not to use archive warnings."

_ June, 479 IC, Iserlohn Fortress _

Yang Wen-li arrived at Iserlohn fortress, the outermost and strongest defensive garrison of the Empire, feeling more out of his depth than he had in years. After graduating from the Imperial Officers’ Academy, he had been immediately and unceremoniously placed onto a crew transport taking him all the way to Iserlohn. He was assigned to one of the front line fleets, ones who patrolled and occasionally exited the corridor into the Alliance territory, in a battlegroup headed by Commodore Willibald Merkatz. The battlegroup was out on patrol at this current moment, and wouldn’t be back at Iserlohn for resupply for almost a week, which left Yang in the very awkward position of being in the fortress with nothing to do but wait.

Under normal circumstances, Yang enjoyed being lazy and not having any assignment. Under this circumstance, in a new location, feeling very strange in his stiff new sub-lieutenant’s uniform, Yang felt wretchedly listless. It wasn’t the listlessness that he knew some of the other new recruits who had made the trip with him were feeling-- the sudden change from living on a planet to being in space. After all, Yang had spent most of his childhood on a ship orders of magnitude smaller than the sixty-five kilometer wide Iserlohn, which had plenty of green spaces. And it wasn’t even the listlessness that came from anticipating some change in life, as he tended to take things like this in stride.

He knew what the cause was. While he had spent four years getting acclimated to life at the Officers’ Academy, this was an unfamiliar place, full of unfamiliar people. Really, more importantly, he was unfamiliar to them. He had forgotten how much hostile and confused stares, double-takes when he walked down the hallway, strange looks from strangers, could all get to him after a while. Yang looked like he didn’t belong, and he hated the kind of attention that it brought.

At first, he had stayed in his tiny assigned bunk, but there was only so much he could do there before the need to move took over. There was really no point in writing to any of his friends (since nothing had happened to him yet since he had last seen them, and he was sure the same thing could be said of them), though he wrote to them all anyway. He tried to read, but found himself for once unable to focus. So Yang took to wandering various parts of the fortress. 

He tried to stay in areas that were both technically public and relatively obscure seeming, since he had no desire to invite unwanted scrutiny by being surrounded by tons of people, or unwanted suspicion by wandering into key military areas that were not his business. Unfortunately for him, the number of these areas in practice was few and far between. Iserlohn was a densely populated place, and the parts that weren’t densely populated were military areas. So, Yang ended up spending quite a lot of time in a rather run-down looking bar that he had passed on his first day in the fortress, one where nobody minded if he sat at a table in the corner and nursed one beer for an inappropriately long time, a book open in front of him while he jotted down the occasional unrelated note into a notebook. 

Though he avoided wandering into the military areas of the fortress, Yang couldn’t help but be observant and curious about its true power. After all, he had spent three years playing a war game in which this fortress had been one of the biggest thorns in the game-Alliance’s side (as it was in real life). So even if the book in front of him was about the Napoleonic wars, the thoughts he wrote down were more vague ponderings about the fortress itself.

It was while Yang was sitting in the dark bar, drinking his equally dark beer, that someone he didn’t know or recognize came up and stood at the end of his table. The newcomer was a tall man, with a pale, drawn face, and long brown hair that was already streaked with grey in places, even though he didn’t seem particularly old.

“Sub-lieutenant von Leigh?” the man asked. His voice was nasally and rather flat.

Yang looked up at him, saw that the man outranked him-- he was wearing a commander’s uniform-- and stood to salute. “Yes, sir,” he said. He wondered if he was being summoned for something. Maybe the battlegroup had returned to Iserlohn early.

“May I join you?” the man asked. 

“Er, yes,” Yang said, though he was very confused. He scrambled to shove his notebook inside his book so that he was taking up less space at the table. The commander sat down across from him, pointedly looking at the notes sticking out of Yang’s book. 

“We don’t know each other,” the commander said, “but we share several mutual acquaintances. My name is Paul von Oberstein.”

This clarified nothing for Yang. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said. “May I ask who we both know?”

“For the past several years, I was working as a staff officer under Fleet Admiral Muckenburger,” Oberstein said. “In that position, I briefly encountered Sub-lieutenant Ernst von Eisenach, who noticed that we had something in common.”

“You  _ spoke _ with Eisenach?”

“No. He wrote to me.”

“Oh, that makes more sense,” Yang said, smiling. “If he had spoken to you in person, I would have thought the whole galactic plane had turned on its head.”

“We keep up a written correspondence only.”

“Then I’m happy to speak with someone Eisenach knows. He thinks himself to be a good judge of character.”

“Indeed,” Oberstein said. “He mentioned to me that one of his friends would be graduating and making a stop here, and wondered if I might be able to ensure that no trouble came to you while on Iserlohn. I apologize that it has taken me several days to track you down. I hope that you have not had any trouble during this time.”

Yang laughed a little. “I can believe that Eisenach still feels responsible for me as my mentor. But neither you nor he need to worry on my behalf. I think I know how to stay out of trouble.”

“He had mentioned that trouble might find you regardless of your looking for it,” Oberstein said in his monotone voice. “I can see why he said so. But I am glad that his fears were, at this moment, unsubstantiated.”

“This is perhaps a personal question, but do you mind if I ask what Eisenach thought he has in common with you?”

Surprisingly, Oberstein reached up towards his own face, and Yang watched, fascinated, as he dug his fingernails into the corners of his own open left eye. His whole eyeball came out, revealing a dark hole in his face, and a computerized, mechanical eye left in his hand, which he held out towards Yang. “Both of my eyes are artificial,” he said.

“A war wound?” Yang asked.

“No. I was born blind.” Oberstein put his eye back in, then continued talking. “Had we been born in Kaiser Rudolph’s time, Eisenach and I would have been killed as babies, under the inferior genes exclusion law.”

“What?” Yang asked. “Eisenach?”

Oberstein looked at him strangely. “He’s deaf. The law covered all such birth defects.”

“Oh, I had no idea. I guess that makes sense.” He shook his head a little. “He mentioned to me once that both he and I were people who Kaiser Rudolph would have disliked, but I assumed he was referring to something else.”

“What did you think he was referring to?”

“Er, it would be indiscreet to say,” Yang said, scratching the back of his head, suddenly embarrassed. He hadn’t really thought of it, but he had been operating under the assumption that Eisenach was also a homosexual, since he had put the pieces together about the way Eisenach talked about having something in common with Reuenthal. Apparently, he had put those pieces together in completely the wrong order.

“There are many types of people that Kaiser Rudolph disliked,” Oberstein said. “It’s a weakness of the Goldenbaum dynasty.”

Yang couldn’t help but be curious about Oberstein, then, and he leaned forward a little. “What do you mean by that?”

“I believe you understand very well what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Eisenach tells me that you organized people who all might have been disliked by Rudolph von Goldenbaum, and you all spent several years as the top of your class at the IOA. In different times, all of that talent would have been at best unrecognized, or, at worst, destroyed.”

“I wouldn’t say all of them would have been disliked,” Yang said, thinking of Bittenfeld and Wahlen, who, as far as he knew, were both extremely normal. “But I see your point.”

“Indeed. It’s a shame that all that talent has been dispersed across the Empire.”

Yang looked across at Oberstein, his odd, expressionless face. “Why is that a shame?”

“Because that talent might again go to waste under incompetent commanders.”

“Did you attend the Academy, Commander?”

“I did.”

“Did you know Captain Staden while you were there?”

“I did.”

“He makes an effort to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

“That effort works out in some cases, and not in others,” Oberstein said. “And Staden tends to be unaware of his own weaknesses.”

“You speak very bluntly about things.”

“I fail to see a reason why I shouldn’t.”

“Certain talk is dangerous.”

“Are we having a dangerous talk, Sub-lieutenant?”

“No, sir,” Yang said.

“Then I shall continue to speak as plainly as I can. I’m glad to have made your acquaintance, von Leigh.”

“Er, I’m glad as well.” He was quite confused by Oberstein, and didn’t understand exactly what he wanted. “I’ll have to thank Eisenach for having you check up on me, though it’s hardly necessary.”

“I would have come to find you regardless of his request. He merely provided an excuse.”

“Oh?”

“From what I’ve heard of you, you are a man blessed with both talent and the ability to befriend others with talent, regardless of their station in life. It’s a rare thing, and it would be a mistake for me to not extend a hand in your direction.”

“Should it worry me that my name is being passed around?” Yang asked. “I haven’t done anything to merit it.”

“It would not surprise me if you did, soon.”

“Unfortunately, Commander, on that point you might be wrong,” Yang said, smiling a little. “I’m unfortunately a very lazy man, and I have no great desire to provide distinguished services to the Goldenbaum dynasty.” 

“And yet you are one of the Goldenbaum dynasty’s servants.”

“I shall strive to be a humble one.”

“Why is that?”

“It seems strange that I would need to explain why I dislike the idea of being an effective weapon of war.”

“Sub-lieutenant,” Oberstein said, “you stand out by virtue of your being. It might be to your benefit to be above reproach in your actions, which by necessity means being successful.”

Yang scratched his head. “Maybe.”

“But perhaps all of this is dangerous talk,” Oberstein said.

“Yes.” Yang relaxed a little, glad to be relieved of Oberstein’s direct scrutiny. “I haven’t even gotten to my post yet. Eisenach would be unhappy if I were engaging in activities that would get me in trouble.”

“And do you follow Eisenach’s instructions?”

Yang laughed. “Are you asking if I consider him my leader?”

“Yes.”

“I consider him a friend, one whose opinions I respect. Him being a year older than I am does not mean that he has either the ability or desire to give me orders.”

Oberstein nodded. “I see.”

“I’m not sure what orders you think Eisenach would have to give me.”

“I wouldn’t presume to say.” Oberstein stood. “It has been interesting speaking with you, von Leigh. I’m sure we will see each other again when you next return to Iserlohn.”

This was a very abrupt end to the conversation, which left Yang feeling somewhat unbalanced. He also stood and held out his hand for Oberstein to shake, which he did. Oberstein’s hand was cold and dry. “I look forward to it, sir,” he said. 

Oberstein nodded curtly, then walked off, leaving Yang to sit back down and ponder the strangeness of the conversation.

* * *

Yang stepped onto the bridge of the ship Tuttlingen Krieger, which he was sure he would have to get familiar with quickly. He was led there by an enlisted man, who had been sent to the docks to pick him up and bring him to Commodore Merkatz. Yang was looking forward to meeting the commodore, though he was apprehensive about memorizing the twists and turns of the interior of the ship. The way it was laid out seemed unintuitive, though perhaps that was due more to his lack of intuition for engineering matters than it was the fault of the ship’s design. On the long walk from the dock to the bridge, they seemed to encounter what felt like to Yang like every member of the crew, all rushing about their business, and all glancing at Yang as they passed, mentally interrogating both his sub-lieutenant uniform and his stranger’s face.

The bridge was a similar hive of activity, and Yang stepped onto it and saluted, finding himself right in the path of the commodore, who was speaking with the ship’s captain over at one of the consoles near the entrance to the bridge. Yang didn’t want to interrupt their conversation, but Merkatz saw him, did one of the double takes that Yang was rather familiar with, at this point, and left the conversation to come over to him. Merkatz was an older man, probably in his late fifties, of average height, with grey hair and a thin mustache. 

“Sub-lieutenant Hank von Leigh reporting, sir,” Yang said.

“Hm.” Merkatz looked him over. “Staden did warn me that I’d find you unusual.”

“I hope that’s not a problem, sir.”

“No, it’s fine. And even if it weren’t, there’s nothing that can be done about it.”

“I’m glad that it won’t be an issue.”

“Staden said you were first in your class?”

“Second, sir,” Yang said.

“I distinctly recall him saying first.”

“I am gratified that he would say that,” Yang said. “But it is not what is on the class record.”

“Oh?”

“It was perhaps a more political decision than an academic one,” Yang said tactfully.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It doesn’t bother me, sir,” Yang said.

“I suppose I benefit, in the long run, if I have managed to acquire the top student.”

“I hope I live up to those expectations.”

“Yes. I’m sure I’ll put you to work quite quickly.”

“I look forward to being useful,” Yang lied.

“Are you generally familiar with the tasks that my battlegroup is responsible for?”

“Patrolling the exit to the Iserlohn corridor, right?”

“Yes. Though in the near future, we may be diverted,” Merkatz said, a strange tone in his gruff voice.

“Diverted, sir?”

“Fleet Admiral Muckenburger feels that the rebels have been settling planets a little too close to the corridor exit for comfort, either ours or theirs. There’s been talk of making a point to them not to do that.”

“Are you saying we would attack a civilian target, sir?” Yang asked, trying to keep the discomfort out of his voice.

“No, all those planets are very well defended. All we would be doing would be nipping at the heels of one of their fleets in one of the more established starzones, just to show them that we absolutely can. With any luck, it would dissuade them from inching any closer.”

“I see.” 

“Well, that probably won’t be for at least a few months. Things move slowly around here. But unless we encounter a rebel fleet inside the corridor mouth in between now and then, that will probably be the first action that you see.”

Yang wasn’t sure how to respond to that-- it seemed silly to say that he was looking forward to it, since he certainly was not, so instead he asked, “Do you often have encounters while on patrol?”

“Often enough that it’s worth having a patrol,” Merkatz said. “Maybe once or twice a month, but usually it’s more of a game of uncle than it is a battle.”

“That makes sense.”

“Why do you say that?” Merkatz asked. Yang suddenly felt like this was a quiz.

Yang scratched his head. “Well, neither you nor the rebel fleet want to waste the resources on sending huge groups of ships to patrol the corridor, so any encounter is going to be between one of two configurations.” Yang illustrated with his hands. “Two approximately even patrol groups, or one patrol group and one full invasion force. In the second case, there’s far more value in the patrol group running back to report what they’ve seen, since, if they remain, they’ll be crushed, so any fighting there will be minimal. In the former category, when approximately even patrols run into each other, well…” He shrugged. “There’s no strategic value in wiping out the other side, and since both groups are evenly matched, any victory would also probably mean heavy losses. So I’d guess that everyone takes a few shots to satisfy their pride, probably you take the more aggressive stance to ward the rebel fleet off, and then they run back to safety.”

Merkatz chuckled a little. “That is how it tends to go, yes.”

“I assume there’s a lot of negotiating that happens between wanting to take a slightly larger force than whatever you think the enemy will send out, versus not wanting to be wasting resources by having an ever-expanding battlegroup.”

“My battlegroup has been expanding,” Merkatz said. “I have about four hundred ships, but the average patrol only has somewhere between seventy and two hundred.”

“Do you patrol the furthest?”

“Correct. We often exit the corridor and head slightly into the rebel territory, which is how we discovered that they’re building far closer to the corridor than we would like.”

“May I ask a question?” Yang asked.

“Of course.”

“Do you like this posting?”

“It’s well suited to me,” he said. “The task is straightforward, worthwhile, and the encounters are, as you said, often evenly matched, which prevents it from being dishonorable. Why do you ask?”

“Just curiosity,” Yang said.

“Did Staden imply that I didn’t like it?”

“Not precisely that,” Yang said.

Merkatz smiled slightly. “I’m sure that you will have plenty of time with me to figure out exactly what he meant.”

“I’m sure, sir,” Yang said.

“Do you think you will like this posting?”

“I’m glad to be back on a ship,” Yang said. “I was raised on a merchant freighter operating off Phezzan.”

“I thought I heard an accent in your voice. There are plenty of postings on ships that aren’t on the very front lines, though.”

“As you said, this work is honorable and worthwhile,” Yang said. “Having advance warning that the rebel fleet is coming through the corridor is something that will save lives, in the end. There are far worse tasks that I could be assigned. And I look forward to serving under someone whom Captain Staden holds in high regard.”

“So, you don’t mind the danger?”

“No, though I’m certain you would think less of me if I said that I did, sir,” Yang said. That got a bit of a wry chuckle out of Merkatz.

“I see that you’re perhaps a bit too honest, von Leigh. But I won’t hold it against you.”

“I appreciate it, sir.”

* * *

_ August, 479 IC, Iserlohn Corridor _

Yang settled into his new position as Merkatz’s aide as best he could. He admitted to himself, and it was obvious to everyone else around him, that he was particularly ill-suited to the kind of administrative work that being an aide required. He made a valiant effort, but his natural propensity towards disorganization meant that he found himself scrambling to coordinate everything, often frantically shuffling papers around to find the one that he needed to give to the commodore, barely remembering messages, and running about forty-five seconds late to every meeting. He didn’t do a bad job, per se, and usually everything worked out in the end, but he was in a state of constant low-level distress, feeling like he had forgotten some task that was vital for the functioning of the battlegroup.

The saving grace of the assignment was that he got along quite well with Merkatz, regardless of his chronic almost-fumbling of his aide tasks. Merkatz seemed to realize quickly that while Yang was abysmal at filling out paperwork and sending out inter-battlegroup memos, he had an excellent ability to take a look at any battle situation they stumbled into and immediately provide valuable suggestions for their battlegroup’s positioning and tactics. It was undiscussed but mutually understood that Merkatz considered this posting to be temporary at best. Merkatz knew that Yang, if he survived and did not make people hate him, would be better as a leader than he would be as any kind of administrative assistant. Although Yang privately considered that he would be better off staying as a glorified secretary, since it would not involve him actually doing anything consequential, he found he liked Merkatz treating him as a kind of apprentice alongside his actual assigned duties.

Although at first the other officers (and some enlisted men) on board the flagship and within the battlegroup were cool to him, Yang remained both professional and affable, and gradually some of them warmed to him, at least enough to make meals in the officers’ mess a less awkward experience. Apparently, Merkatz had treated his adjutants more like apprentices before, so there was less resentment than there could have been from the senior officers that Yang was allowed to give real strategic input. Yang asked about these predecessors of his, to find out where they had ended up. A few had gotten good starts in promising careers, while a few others had washed out of the invisible “leadership track” that Yang had somehow ended up on. He was wary of this concept for a variety of reasons.

Although he did not like the idea of being responsible, someday, for larger and larger parts of the imperial fleet, he also didn’t want to disappoint Merkatz, or, for that matter, his friends. When he thought about or wrote to Reuenthal, he always ended up picturing a future in which they were both rising on this path together. It was a steep and narrow road, very easy to fall off of, and Yang also worried that should he fall, his fall would be rather spectacular. Perhaps it was premature for him to think about things like this, as he had only been in his position for about two months.

One day, while Yang was eating dinner with Merkatz and several other senior officers in the officers’ mess, the ship PA sounded. “Commodore Merkatz to the bridge.”

There were generally only a few reasons why that message would be sent out, and the most likely one was that the battlegroup had encountered enemy units. Everyone around the table collectively began to put their forks and napkins down, ready to go to their stations, annoyed that their dinner had been interrupted but used to this kind of interruption. Merkatz was the only one who did not move, and he continued to sedately eat his brussel sprouts.

“Leigh, could you go find out what the problem is and deal with it?” Merkatz asked, glancing first at Yang, then the other senior officers to ensure that they knew what was going on. Yang caught the ship’s executive officer, Berringer, roll his eyes ever so slightly, though he didn’t think that Merkatz saw. “If it is something that urgently requires my attention, call me, of course, but I would like to finish my dinner. The rest of you, listen to Leigh.”

This would be a test for Yang, then. “Of course, sir,” Yang said. “I’m sure I can take care of it.”

“I’m sure,” Merkatz said. “Well, go.”

Yang scrambled to obey, abandoning his own dinner and speed-walking to the bridge. Lieutenant Commander Berringer walked beside him for a moment. “Leigh, keep in mind that he’s just made you responsible for real lives. Including both mine and yours.”

“I know, sir,” Yang said. He liked Berringer, but he definitely didn’t need the reminder. He was fully aware of the responsibility that he had been given. 

They arrived on the bridge. Yang felt far too awkward to sit down in the chair that was usually reserved for Merkatz, so instead he stood in his usual place next to the chair, looking around at what was going on. 

“What’s the situation?” he asked. “The commodore said that unless it requires his immediate attention, I am responsible here.” Though there were a few concerned glances shared between the members of the bridge crew, but most of them were used to Merkatz putting other people through this kind of test, so there was no argument, as there hadn’t been any from the other senior officers in the mess. 

“Ansible communications are being jammed,” the communications officer reported. “We have inter-ship coms only.”

“Any chance it’s natural?” Yang asked.

“Highly unlikely.”

“Have we seen any sign of enemy units?”

“Not yet.”

“Drop us to sublight speeds,” Yang said. “They might pop out at us then.”

The order was relayed across the battlegroup, and Yang felt the odd lurch of the stardrive’s posture transition beneath them. They were outside the Iserlohn corridor currently, deeper into Alliance territory than Yang preferred to be, but that was what their patrol route was, working their way between various starzones close to the corridor exit to ensure that the Alliance fleet wasn’t massing ships anywhere in preparation for a corridor breakthrough.

Yang took a look at their battlegroup’s positioning on the board. Their drop to sublight hadn’t been clean, and he didn’t like the way the edges of the group were looking rather ragged. “Reorganize us into a sphere formation,” Yang said. “I don’t want straggling edges right now.”

Again, the command was relayed, and slowly their formation cleaned up.

They were on the outskirts of a place called Averno Starzone, which would have barely been worth mentioning on any map of the area. The star was a red dwarf, orbited by one solitary gas giant. Although communications interference could have been caused by stellar flares on the surface of the star, the whole system appeared as peaceful as could be, so there were definitely enemy units lurking around somewhere. Not only that, but they were enemy units who had both seen them, and wanted their battlegroup to know that they had been seen. Merkatz’s ships could have skated right through this area completely unaware, if the enemy had not decided to jam communications. 

It was a highly unusual situation, and, to Yang, it felt like a trap. Perhaps he was being paranoid, though. He scratched at the back of his head as he considered the map on the large screen at the front of the bridge. In order to jam communications, the enemy ships must have been close by, enough that Yang would have been able to see them if they weren’t hiding. That left two locations where the enemy units could be: hiding near the gas giant, or hiding near the star itself. Of the two, Yang considered the gas giant a more likely hiding place than near the star. Red dwarfs could be temperamental things, and getting too close to a star was never a comfortable proposition at the best of times. A sudden stellar flare could be disastrous for any ships that were out of line, and it would wreak havoc even with regular EM communications.

He had a bad feeling about the whole situation, but it would have been a ridiculous move to order a retreat without even seeing the enemy. Although Merkatz liked him, that would have been enough of a dereliction of duty to send Yang completely out of his good graces.

“Bring us closer to the planet, but keep us sublight for now,” Yang said. “I want reconnaissance drones out front-- make sure we have line of sight all around it. Prepare depth charges to drop into the planet’s atmosphere, in case they’re hiding in the gas.”

He was tempted to send drones out towards the star, as well, but it seemed like too much of a waste of equipment. This was more than just him being given a chance to lead; this was Merkatz testing him. If he ended up looking like someone who wasted resources on paranoia, that wouldn’t reflect well on him.

Instead, he said, “Make sure we’re keeping eyes on the star, as well. I don’t think they’re hiding behind it, but it’s a possibility, and I’d rather not be caught by surprise.”

The unfortunate thing about this star system was that the orbital distance was very short. Coming closer to the planet brought them within light-minutes of the star, which was uncomfortably close. If the enemy was hiding close to the star, they would probably avoid going above lightspeed, but that only gave Yang a bit of extra time. He was worrying about odd eventualities, and he wished he wasn’t. He felt paranoid, even to himself. Perhaps it was just the tension of being put in charge for the first time.

Yang tried to keep the discomfort out of his voice when he said, “Keep the planet between us and the star.”

“May I ask why?” Berringer said, coming up beside him.

“I want us to stay out of its gravity well, if at all possible,” Yang said, which wasn’t the entire truth. He didn’t want to try to explain his odd paranoia to Berringer. “It wouldn’t provide any tactical advantage for us to sit in the Lagrange point.”

Berringer seemed to accept this and nodded. 

The report came back from their reconnaissance drones: no sign of ships behind the planet. Yang was tense. “I think they’re in the atmosphere.”

It was clear that the enemy was trying to draw them in, get them closer to the planet. Yang had no desire to do that, but he wouldn’t be able to get them out of their little hiding hole if he didn’t move closer. To drop their depth charges, they would have to come into a low orbit above the gas giant. Yang reluctantly gave the order to move closer, keeping them all in a sphere formation. “Let’s see if we can’t get them to come out.” He was falsely cheerful.

They came in closer, the planet looming large on the screen. “Drop the depth charges as soon as we’re in range, then back out to a quarter light second orbit.” Maybe it was wasteful to move the whole battlegroup as a unit like this, but he didn’t want to send a couple ships out front as sacrificial lambs, unprotected by the bulk of the rest of the group.

While they were in the process of dropping the depth charges, the enemy fleet revealed itself, rising up out of the atmosphere of the planet and firing at the foremost ships in the battlegroup.

“Pull back, but keep returning fire. I want to get them all out of the atmosphere. How many are there?”

“About two hundred fifty,” the radar operator said. 

The enemy ships were taking a spearhead formation, charging towards Merkatz’s battlegroup, clearly intending to split it down the middle. Yang didn’t like the number that he had been given. A group of two hundred fifty ships against a group of four hundred ships was almost certain to be a loss for the smaller group, but they had practically invited Yang in, despite knowing their size difference. The smell of a trap grew stronger, but still, Yang didn’t want to act paranoid.

“Move us counterclockwise around the planet and raise our orbit; get out of their way. If they want to retreat, let them. Keep firing on them. Don’t leave our side vulnerable.”

If,  _ if _ , the other commander left right now, Yang could relax. Letting an enemy patrol group go after firing a few shots at them was the way these encounters normally went, and he hoped that this one would be no different. But his hopes were dashed when, instead of heading for the wide open escapes that Yang was providing, the enemy group turned and continued to pursue Yang. 

Yang sighed a little, wiped his sweaty palms on the side of his uniform, then gave his next order. “Put us in a cone formation, fire at them as much as we can while they’re turning. I also want the rear of our group to be ready to turn and fire, in case this group has reinforcements on the way.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Berringer said. “You think there’s reinforcements?”

“I think that this is a setup.” He pointed at the board. “They’ve gotten us stuck in combat with a smaller force-- they drew us in on purpose-- I suspect that they have a much larger force hiding behind the star, probably en route now. This group is a distraction.”

Berringer frowned. “I hope you’re wrong.”

“If I were a rebel admiral,” Yang said, “I’d probably want to teach a lesson to the imperial battlegroup that’s been patrolling this far outside the corridor. They knew we were going to pass through here, and they were waiting for us. I think this is a trap intended for us. My guess is that there’s another three hundred, three-fifty, ships on their way.”

Berringer nodded. “So, what’s the plan?”

“This group won’t let us run, I’m sure, not unless we strike them decisively. They’ll keep us here until their friends can arrive, and then that’ll be… messy. It would be worse if we did run, and then they joined up with their friends, because then they’d chase us and we’d be outnumbered.” He anxiously rubbed his hands together. “Our best hope is to deal with these here, and hope that their larger force is still approximately equal to us when they arrive. Then we can probably force a draw. Or a mutual retreat. You know. We just can’t let this,” he gestured at the board, “go on for very long.”

Yang watched the battle situation progress. They had the upper hand, for the moment, and they were chipping away at the enemy while taking only minimal damage themselves. Still, it was taking a long time, and the longer it took, the more anxious Yang became. The enemy had taken a flat, rectangular formation. It may have been an attempt at a sphere, but they lacked enough ships to really make it clear.

Yang gave another order. “Concentrate fire on their right flank. Try to force them back down towards the planet.”

Merkatz’s group was in a higher orbit than the enemy, so they were able to do this, forcing them slowly down towards the planet. Once again, the enemy tried a charge to break through their center, but now they were worn down enough that it didn’t make much of a difference.

Yang felt safe enough against at least this small enemy to say, “Spread out and circle them, force them down into the atmosphere.”

He tried not to think about the fact that he was killing people with these orders.

“As soon as they’re deep enough, drop the rest of our depth charges.”

It was at this point that Commodore Merkatz returned to the bridge. Yang didn’t notice him at first, and continued to give orders. “I want us to back away from the planet, take us into a sphere formation again, get us back out towards the edge of the system. There’s not enough left of this group to be worth worrying about.”

Merkatz contemplated the board for a moment. “What’s the situation, Sub-lieutenant?” he asked finally.

Yang practically jumped out of his skin. “Oh! Commodore, sorry, I didn’t see you come in.” He quickly explained the situation as the battlegroup reorganized and backed away from the planet.

Merkatz ran his hand down his chin. “It seems as though you have everything under control, Leigh. Carry on.”

“Er, thank you, sir.” Yang said. Merkatz took a seat back in his chair, leaving Yang still somewhat in command, but now supervised. 

As the planet grew smaller in the viewscreen and their situational awareness of the whole starsystem improved, Yang saw, unpleasantly, that he had been right. Coming towards the planet, moving at a decent fraction of the speed of light, was the other portion of the battlegroup. They were practically on top of them by the time that Merkatz’s group had moved far enough back that they could even see them. It was a group of about five hundred ships, which made Yang flinch. He had severely underestimated the number that would be en route. 

Still, five hundred versus four hundred ships, while uneven, was still a survivable battle for their side. It was good that they were already organized into a defensive formation, so when the first shots were exchanged, it didn’t cause their side to fall into complete disarray.

The other side didn’t seem like it wanted to let them retreat, though their plan to surprise Merkatz’s group while they had been engaged with the smaller force had fallen through thanks to Yang’s foresight. 

The battle became fiercer, with Yang feeling like he was on the back foot. He wanted desperately to retreat, but he knew that the other side would chase them unless he made that an undesirable option for them. The longer the fight went on, the more both sides suffered. Merkatz watched Yang silently, though Yang had to assume that he approved of the orders that Yang was giving, since he was not the type not to step in when his men’s lives were on the line. If Yang had been doing a poor job, he would have been relieved of command immediately. 

Merkatz’s battlegroup had one major advantage over the other side: their positioning and ship movement was far better and more responsive than the enemy. This was because Merkatz was a stickler for clean fleet movement, and they often drilled switching between positions and formations when they were in the safer parts of the Iserlohn corridor. The enemy group seemed to be either inexperienced or unpracticed, and their clumsy movements left space for Yang to press them.

After about two hours of fighting, Merkatz’s fleet had lost about seventy-five ships, but the enemy fleet had lost about two hundred, in addition to the almost complete loss of the smaller group Yang had fought before. It wasn’t an overwhelming victory by any means, but Yang thought that they had pressed the other side enough that they wouldn’t pursue and risk further losses. He leaned towards Merkatz. “Should we retreat, sir?” he asked. “I don’t think they’ll chase us.”

Merkatz nodded. “Give the order, Leigh.”

So Yang told them to pull back and reorganize, then turn and go to lightspeed as quickly as possible. The other group fired a few parting shots in their direction, but, as Yang had suspected, didn’t chase.

When they were far enough away that the battlegroup could stand down from its fighting status, Yang felt like the puppet strings that had been holding him up and stiff had been cut. He wanted to flop down to the ground, or at least into a chair, but there wasn’t anywhere for him to sit, so he remained standing, feeling deeply uncomfortable in his own skin now as Merkatz took over the normal running of the battlegroup.

“Plot our course back to Iserlohn. Take us on route C-3, if possible. Transmit our status report to command over the ansible as soon as it’s ready.” Merkatz glanced at his watch and told the captain that he should order the shift change. Then he stood up. “Sub-lieutenant, join me in my office.” He turned over command to his actual second in command, Commander Warrensburg, who had just walked in for the upcoming shift change, then headed out.

Yang followed Merkatz out and to his office. The room was dark and well furnished, reflecting Merkatz’s taste. He had been using this ship as his flagship for a long time-- too long, probably, Yang thought, since he really should have been promoted a while ago-- so it was filled with personal touches, including a framed photo of his family. Yang stood stiffly in the middle of the room, waiting for Merkatz to address him. Merkatz had his back turned and was fiddling with something in the cabinets behind his desk. He turned around, revealing that he was holding two glasses of brandy.

“Take a seat, Leigh,” Merkatz said. Yang did so, and Merkatz sat as well, sliding one of the glasses across the desk towards him. “You’re pale as a ghost.”

“Sorry, sir-- I didn’t get to finish my dinner. I think I have low blood sugar.” This was a pathetic excuse, and Merkatz knew it. 

Merkatz smiled, slightly grimly. “I should probably apologize for putting you on the spot like that. I did not expect this to be anything other than the usual potshots we take at whatever rebels we encounter.”

“I don’t think it’s right to expect anything in a war,” Yang said, though he regretted it as soon as he did.

“You’re correct, of course,” Merkatz said. He noticed Yang was fiddling with his glass but not drinking any of it. “Drink up.”

Yang did. He took too big of a sip, and the alcohol burned on the way down, but the feeling of it brought him back to his body for a moment, and he straightened in his chair, looking down into his glass.

“You did well,” Merkatz said, finally. “I think you handled the situation far better than most would have.”

“Thank you, sir.” He shook his head a little. “I know I’m going to keep thinking about what I could have done better, though.” He had just been directly responsible for the deaths of-- he did the rough mental math-- thousands of people, both those who had been in the enemy group, and the ships that had been destroyed in Merkatz’s fleet. It hadn’t quite sunk in yet. He twisted his glass around in his hands. Perhaps he had been wrong about his opinions on playing games back in school; it was perhaps the cool, detached unreality of the game state that he had been so used to slipping into that made him able to stay calm and give commands, even though there were real lives on the line here. He wasn’t sure if he liked that. He wasn’t sure if it was right.

“There’s rarely such a thing as a perfect battle,” Merkatz said, “and even a perfect battle is almost certainly going to incur losses. If you had been doing badly, I would have taken back command. You made the best choices available.”

“Thank you, sir,” Yang said again, not really sure what else there was to say.

“I will have to write to Captain Staden to thank him for sending you to me.”

“He’ll be glad to hear that his efforts on my account paid off,” Yang said, though he couldn’t quite keep the grim tone out of his voice.

“It’s clear to me that you have a brilliant mind,” Merkatz said. “Along with a natural ability to give clear, calm, and reasonable instructions. That is not something that’s easy to teach, especially when coming out of the Academy. Some of the people I’ve had in your position in the past have had unrealistic expectations about what they can physically order ships to do.”

“I try, sir,” Yang said. He wasn’t sure where this conversation was going. Merkatz kept speaking and looking at Yang as though to gauge something about him, though Yang couldn’t figure it out.

“You’re going to go far,” Merkatz said. “I already thought that, but you did more today than I had any right to expect of you. I keep forgetting that you only graduated from the Academy this year.”

Yang shrugged, feeling very uncomfortable. “I am glad that you trusted me to do right by the men under your command.”

Merkatz nodded, looking thoughtful. “I do trust you,” he said. “And I think this will go a long way in raising you in their eyes, as well. But I probably shouldn’t have this happen again.” He looked at Yang, who was still looking down into his glass, swirling his drink around. “Are you disappointed by that?”

“No, sir,” Yang said honestly. “I don’t deserve responsibilities above my station, and I don’t want to step on the senior officers’ toes.”

“Good. I’m glad you understand. These tests-- they’re fine occasionally, but I can’t justify them very often. This one got out of hand, and I apologize.”

“You don’t need to apologize, sir.”

“Perhaps.” Merkatz was thoughtful sounding. “How do you feel, von Leigh?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I understand,” Merkatz said. “I’ve been in a lot of battles, and there’s never an easy or right feeling on the other end of them.”

Yang nodded. “I’m just tired, I think.”

Merkatz chuckled a little. “Of course. I’m just trying to make sure you don’t go to bed feeling like you did a poor job, because that will make you less effective in the morning.”

“I appreciate the effort, sir.”

“Finish your drink and go to bed,” Merkatz said. “You’ll be able to see the situation more clearly tomorrow morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name of Merkatz's ship probably wins an award for the world's most obscure mountain goats reference. I had thought of a better one, but then I forgot so I had to think of some nonsense lol. The title of the whole work is also a mountain goats song lyric.
> 
> Do spacebattles in which thousands of people die count as baby's first murder? If so, then we're starting out strong with Yang's baby's first murder. If not, at least we're starting out with Yang's baby's first real spacebattle.
> 
> Fuck Oberstein all my homies hate Oberstein, etc etc etc. (Unless you're in the camp of "Oberstein did nothing wrong" in which case, I'm sure you're glad to see him here lmao)
> 
> Thank you to Lydia for the beta read. More spacebattles @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven um. more responsibility that the main character doesn't want over at bit.ly/arcadispark. Find me on twitter as @natsinator and on tumblr as @javert.


	2. The Hero of El Facil

_ October, 479 IC, Iserlohn Corridor _

“Our orders have come in,” Merkatz said, walking onto the bridge of the Tuttlingen Krieger. Yang, who had been hovering next to Commander Warrensburg and half taking notes on something he was saying about their fleet’s upcoming maintenance, looked up sharply and saluted. Warrensburg got out of Merkatz’s chair. “We’re going to go through the corridor first, because that’s our normal patrol behavior. Everyone else might have a trick of a time getting through, so we have the dubious honor of being the initial strike.”

“You don’t sound enthusiastic, sir,” Yang said.

“It’s not my place to be enthusiastic or not,” Merkatz said. “What’s our status?”

“We’re ready to go,” Yang said. “As soon as we have a destination.”

“El Facil,” Merkatz said. “Heard of it?”

“No, sir,” Yang said. He wracked his brain, trying to picture the relevant starmap, but there were more inhabited planets in the FPA than he cared to remember, and this one was not sticking out in his mind for any reason.

“The system has a permanent garrison of about a thousand ships to defend its one planet. Population of about three million people.”

“Not very big,” Yang said.

“It’s no Heinessen, that’s for sure,” Merkatz said. “We’re not aiming to take the planet, unless the situation looks like that’s required, though. Just scare their fleet.” Yang nodded as Merkatz sat down. “Admiral Whithorse has told me that I am retroactively earning my promotion with this.”

“Admiral Whithorse doesn’t understand tact, sir,” Commander Warrensburg said.

“Neither do you,” Merkatz replied dryly. “But he’s right, in that generally I should not have gotten promoted until we get back to Odin. He just needed the official authority to give me a larger detachment.”

“It seems surprising you weren’t promoted earlier,” Yang said.

“You’ve been writing to Staden too much,” Merkatz said.

“Perhaps I have been.”

“There was nothing wrong with being a commodore,” Merkatz said. “And there is nothing wrong with being a rear admiral, either. Promotions happen when they happen, and it’s not my place to worry myself unduly about them.”

Yang and Warrensburg shared a look over the top of Merkatz’s head. “Of course not, sir,” Yang said.

“You’re both due for promotions when we get back to Odin, though. That’s not a secret.”

“I look forward to it,” Warrensburg said. 

“Will you be asking for a transfer?”

“No, I don’t think so, sir,” Warrensburg replied.

“You could have a ship of your own,” Merkatz said. “I enjoyed my stint as a captain.”

“Maybe some other time, sir.”

“Suit yourself.” 

The whole small fleet made preparations to get moving. They were already deep into the Iserlohn corridor, and the journey all the way to the exit would take several days. Merkatz was somewhat annoyed with the fleet. His promotion to rear admiral meant that the number of ships under his command had also more than doubled, going from four hundred to one thousand. The new additions were not as practiced with the way Merkatz liked to perform fleet maneuvers, so some of the positioning was sloppy. Although they had been spending almost every spare second since the new ships had arrived on drilling positioning, it was a bandaid on a sponge. 

They crept out of the corridor along one of their usual routes, not encountering any Alliance patrols, then deviated from their normal course to head towards their target. They were discouraged from communicating with central command, in case their ansible messages were intercepted, so they had no idea if the other fleets following them out had made it through the corridor exit unscathed. It left a weird feeling of anticipation hanging over the crew, including all of the officers. This was almost certainly going to be the biggest action they had seen in a while, and so everyone was on edge.

They slipped down to sublight speeds just outside the edge of the El Facil starzone, activating their anti-radar protections and sending out reconnaissance drones to determine the position and strength of the enemy forces in the system. As expected, there were about a thousand ships, most of them grouped up in a space-based port in orbit around the planet. 

Merkatz began their assault in the standard way: by jamming communications, which served the dual purpose of announcing their presence to the enemy. They weren’t going for stealth; really, they wanted the opposite. This whole plan, as much as Merkatz clearly disagreed with it (despite not saying anything officially against it), was to deliberately engage the enemy, just to show that they could. 

The Alliance fleet responded exactly as Yang would have expected. As soon as they realized that Merkatz’s fleet was in the starsystem, they deployed their fleet en masse, coming out to meet the invaders. Merkatz brought their fleet in towards the inhabited planet very slowly. Since his orders were not to take the planet unless the opportunity presented itself, all Merkatz had to do was bait the Alliance fleet into moving further away from the planet. No one, on either side, wanted to fight close to the planet. Merkatz would prefer to stay further out because it would allow them an easier retreat, and the Alliance had vested interest in not allowing the imperial fleet to approach the planet, not to mention the civilian infrastructure of communications satellites and other orbiting instruments that would be likely damaged if a fleet battle took place directly above the atmosphere.

At first, the battle was a pretty standard affair. Both sides had their own problems. The Alliance had started the battle at a disadvantage, their faster ships arriving to meet the imperial fleet first, leaving them a rather vulnerable and soft target. It was poor positioning; it would have been better for the fleet to come out slowly as a group, so as not to have their vanguard be easy pickings. After all, Merkatz was heading towards the planet very, very slowly.

That state of advantage didn’t last very long, however, because as the remainder of the Alliance force caught up, the weaknesses of Merkatz’s new ships began to show. They had pressed forward towards the first wave of Alliance ships, which left their own forward lines slightly ragged. They were slow to regroup their front lines, and the Alliance was able to press into them, then.

Merkatz backed off slightly in order to truly reorganize, and there was a brief pause in the fighting as the Alliance did the same. And then they were at it again. 

Yang watched Merkatz through the fight. Although the rear admiral was performing his assigned duty with all his normal skill, Yang could tell that the whole situation was distasteful to him. This was a battle without a strategic objective other than to have a battle, which felt as much like throwing away soldiers’ lives as it possibly could. And he was trying hard to keep his patience with his own fleet’s challenges. He was forced to use only the most basic of positionings in order to not open up holes in his own defense because of ill-coordinated movement, and this meant that he was having difficulty truly capitalizing on his opponent’s moments of weakness. Although Yang had no real desire to see either side “win” this battle, he also hated watching moments of opportunity slip by, ones where they could have dealt a decisive blow, proved their point, and retreated without further loss of life on either side. 

The fight dragged on. Both sides had started out with about a thousand ships, but after about twelve hours, the Alliance had lost about two hundred ships, while Merkatz’s fleet had lost only about one hundred twenty five, with the disparity mainly due to their early success against the Alliance fleet’s vanguard units.

“We’re going to pull back and regroup,” Merkatz said once again, looking at the situational display, which clearly showed the ragged front of their center, and the disorganized chaos of their right flank, which had been slowly sliding out of position for the past several hours. It had now gotten to the point where the Alliance was trying to turn and capitalize on that disorganization, so Merkatz had to order another momentary retreat. “Keep firing, but bring us back a third of a light second. I want our flanks moving with the rest of us, not falling behind.”

Agonizingly slowly, the fleet began its retreat backwards. The center had to move slowly to account for the stumbling of the flanks, which slowly began to pull themselves back in. Yang was tense during this whole process, knowing that this would be an ideal time for the Alliance fleet to charge them and possibly strike a decisive blow, but they didn’t, instead pulled themselves back a little, as they had done before, and tried to reorganize their own front.

Merkatz turned in his seat towards Commander Warrensburg, who was trying to coordinate this retreat and reorganization. “Warrensburg, I need you to do me a favor,” Merkatz said.

“What do you need, sir?”

“Put yourself on a shuttle, get onboard the Prinz der Wale, and take command of the C and D sections. Deal with their reorganization from there, while I take A and B to finish this.” The C and D groups were the new additions to Merkatz’s fleet, while the A and B groups were his more experienced ships.

“Is it really a good idea to split our forces, sir?” Yang asked. He could see the benefit of it, having a more nimble force would be an advantage, and Warrensburg could always catch up to them should they need him, but still, it was always risky to split.

Merkatz waved his hand. “If we move now, while they’re still reorganizing, yes. We can strike decisively and then get out quickly. The longer this drags on, the more ships I’m going to lose. Do you have any questions, Warrensburg?”

“No, sir,” Warrensburg said. “I’m on my way.” He saluted, then ran out of the bridge. Within three minutes, his shuttle was sailing away towards the Prinz der Wale. 

“Good luck to him,” Merkatz muttered under his breath. Yang winced a little at that-- it was rare for Merkatz to be this visibly frustrated. “A and B, take a spearhead formation.”

The captain of the Tuttlingen Krieger came over to Merkatz. “Sir, without the C and D groups, this formation puts your flag directly at the front.”

“That’s fine,” Merkatz said. “I would rather be at the front than cause everyone to fall out of position by moving. We’ve had enough trouble with that as it is.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain said, and returned to his position with a slightly concerned glance backwards.

“If I may say something, sir,” Yang began.

“No, you may not,” Merkatz said. “I want this over with, and I want us out of here.”

Yang ran his hand uncomfortably through his hair, shoulders slightly slumped. He empathized with Merkatz here, but the tension on the bridge was running high. Their half of the fleet began moving, accelerating towards the Alliance forces that had backed off and were still trying to reorganize.

“As soon as we’re done with this, drop the communications jamming and report to command that we’ve accomplished our objective and we’re heading back,” Merkatz said.

Their smaller and far more nimble group rocketed forward through space, towards the retreating and re-organizing Alliance fleet. Merkatz’s plan looked like it was a stunning success, at first, because the Alliance had no idea what was happening, and with Merkatz pushing right through their center, fell into complete chaos, firing on the incoming ships randomly. About half of the Alliance fleet turned around completely and started heading back towards the planet itself. Merkatz let them go and concentrated his fire on those ships that remained.

It was going well, until the disorganized Alliance ships managed to strike a few extremely lucky blows directly onto the Tuttlingen Krieger. The whole ship was thrown sideways with the force of the final blow, directly to the stardrive, causing the artificial gravity to go haywire for a second. Everyone was thrown to the floor with twenty Gs of acceleration. Yang, who had been standing, was relatively lucky, because his knees simply crumpled beneath him. His face hit the metal floor with a sickening slap, leaving an imprint of the anti-slip texture on his face, but as he had already lost consciousness for a second before he hit the floor (from all of the blood abruptly leaving his head), he didn’t feel the impact.

He got up dizzily and looked around, feeling his bruised face to make sure he hadn’t broken his jaw or cheekbone. He hadn’t, though he suspected that the whole left side of his face would be a horrible looking lump for a while. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the new emergency lighting on the bridge. All of the displays had gone out and only the eerie red battery powered lights remained. Most people on the bridge were stumbling around, trying to get up, and alarms were blaring. Yang’s hearing still hadn’t quite returned to normal, so they sounded odd and watery in his ears. He could feel that, although they had gravity at this moment, it was slowly weakening, which meant that the stardrive was shutting down.

His eyes roved to where Merkatz had been sitting, found the chair empty, then his view continued downwards. Merkatz was on the floor, having somehow fallen off the raised platform where his chair was. He was face down and not moving. Yang stumbled over to him, crouching down next to him and gently trying to flip him over onto his back. Yang’s fingers felt wet, though in the red emergency lighting, red blood looked as black as Merkatz’s uniform. 

Merkatz was alive, though, and stirred at Yang’s poking.

“Are you alright, sir?” Yang asked. Merkatz sat up. His face was covered in blood, from a nasty gash on his head. It might have been Yang’s imagination in the dim light, but he thought he saw the white of bone in the cut. He must have hit the sharp edge of the platform on the way down, and hit it hard. He blinked at Yang, clearly very disoriented, and tried to get up, but stumbled. Yang supported him for a moment.

The captain of the Tuttlingen Krieger approached again, looking the worse for wear himself. He was holding his arm to his face, bleeding from either his nose or his mouth, Yang couldn’t quite tell.

“Sir, the stardrive is inoperable. I recommend you abandon ship and transfer your flag elsewhere,” the captain said.

Merkatz nodded after a second, taking an abnormally long time to process the statement and think about a response. “What about you?”

“I will give the order for all hands to abandon,” the captain said. “Our shuttles should be able to make it back to the C and D group.”

“Right,” Merkatz said.

“Are you alright, sir?” the captain asked.

“I believe I have a concussion,” Merkatz said, the words coming slowly and sounding slurred. “Leigh should take command.”

The captain glanced at Yang, who was still supporting Merkatz. “I--” Yang said, but was cut off by the captain.

“Get to a shuttle,” the captain said. “I advise you head to the Prinz der Luther. They’re in good shape in the rear.”

“Yes, sir,” Yang said. 

“I’ll have a doctor meet you at the shuttle,” the captain said. “Go!”

Yang went, helping Merkatz down the hall. He agreed with Merkatz’s own assessment that he was concussed. His steps were clumsy, and he was not coping with the subtle shifting and lessening of gravity at all.

They made it onto a shuttle, along with several other enlisted crew members and the doctor, and they launched, heading toward the ship Prinz der Luther. The shuttle was dead quiet as the doctor examined Merkatz, shining a little penlight into his eyes and looking at the severity of the wound.

“Definitely a concussion,” the doctor said. “But I think we can be lucky that it’s not worse. We’ll get you a brain scan to make sure there’s nothing else going on when we get to the Prinz der Luther. You’ll need stitches, but nothing’s broken.”

As the doctor cleaned the wound and put a gauze patch over it, Merkatz leaned back in his shuttle seat with his eyes closed, speaking slowly and quietly. “Leigh, take command of A and B, finish this. Get in contact with Iserlohn command and let them know the situation.”

“Yes, sir.”

When their shuttle made it to the Prinz der Luther, which was only a short distance away, Yang jogged to the bridge, while Merkatz was sent to the infirmary. The situation on the bridge was fine. Yang was offered and took the captain’s seat at the front of the bridge. No one in the A and B groups had much of a problem with Yang taking command; his prior few “tests” with Merkatz had proven to them that he was reliable and not flashy, at the very least.

Things were actually going extremely well, aside from having had to abandon the Tuttlingen Krieger. The Alliance fleet was in total disarray, and those few ships that had not yet fled back to the planet were either surrendering, beginning to run, or were being picked off. Yang was tempted to ask for the ability to broadcast to the remaining ships, to either tell them to surrender or retreat, but he decided that might be putting his neck too much on the line. 

“This is almost over,” Yang said to whoever was listening, which appeared to be the command staff of the Prinz der Luther, mostly. “Lift the communications jamming and patch me through to central command, if we can.”

Someone did so, and the grainy, distorted image of someone who Yang didn’t recognize from the Iserlohn fleet control popped up on the screen. Yang saluted.

“Where is Rear Admiral Merkatz?” the man on the screen demanded immediately.

“His flagship, the Tuttlingen Krieger, was hit, and he sustained a concussion. He’s currently in the infirmary of the Prinz der Luther,” Yang said. “He gave me, his adjutant, er, Sub-lieutenant von Leigh, command of part of the fleet.”

The man on the screen twitched in what was clearly a stifled cringe. “And what is your situation?”

“We engaged the enemy in the El Facil starzone about ten hours ago, and have successfully destroyed about half of the rebel fleet, while the remainder has retreated to the planet. Our losses are about twenty percent of our fleet. Rear Admiral Merkatz’s final order was for us to report to you and withdraw to Iserlohn.”

“Belay that order, Sub-lieutenant,” the man on the screen said. “Admiral Whithorse was waiting for you to report in. Your new objective is to seize the planet. Reinforcements are on their way.”

Yang jerked back a little, startled. “May I ask why, sir?”

“Due to unforeseen events elsewhere in the corridor--” Yang interpreted this to mean someone, somewhere had lost spectacularly-- “our strategic objectives have changed, and we are focusing on holding El Facil.”

“Understood,” Yang said, though it was with reluctance. “When can we expect reinforcements?”

“Within the next three days.” That was about what Yang had expected. El Facil wasn’t exactly close to anything else, and if all the other forces had been diverted from elsewhere, it was surprising that they wouldn’t need more time.

Yang wanted to clarify something. “Is the expectation that we wait in-system for reinforcements, or is the order for us to take the planet?” They didn’t have a lot of ships and no specialized ground units, but a population of three million was not very large, and they could probably… Yang sighed, thinking over what they were actually being asked to do.

“You said that the remainder of the rebel fleet’s units retreated to the planet, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The reinforcements en route are intended to counter the rebel fleet’s own reinforcements. You have a numerical advantage and should take the planet without much difficulty. Understood?”

“Er, yes, sir,” Yang said, feeling very uncomfortable. For one thing, their numerical advantage was not that great, especially considering that much of the fleet that was still operational had taken some damage, and Merkatz himself wasn’t able to be in command, at least at the moment. And, aside from that, Yang had absolutely zero interest in capturing a civilian planet. The whole thing left a bad taste in his mouth, even if he swore to make this as peaceful as he could. He didn’t know how much he could salvage this situation, but it felt like it was all coming down on his head.

Still, no matter how bad he was feeling, he thought as he gazed at the screen at the distant planet, his problems were certainly nothing compared to the troubles of everyone on El Facil itself.

Yang finished speaking to central command, then called up Warrensburg at the head of the C and D groups.

“Where’s Rear Admiral Merkatz?” Warrensburg asked, as soon as he appeared on the screen. “For that matter, where are you?” He could see that Yang was not on board the Tuttlingen Krieger.

Yang saluted. “The Tuttlingen Krieger was hit, and we had to move to the Prinz der Luther. Rear Admiral Merkatz has a concussion, and he gave me command of the A and B groups.”

Warrensburg sighed but didn’t argue. “What’s your status?”

Yang explained their new orders. Warrensburg was pensive the whole time, and ran his hand over his chin, stroking his short black beard. “C and D are in better shape than you are. I suggest that I head to the planet and urge them to surrender, while you stay out here and deal with any stragglers.”

“I still don’t love the thought of staying split up.”

“The force on the planet is minimal, at this point. I expect they’ll surrender in short order. And even if they don’t, they will as soon as our reinforcements get to the starzone.”

Yang nodded. “I suppose we do have some cleanup to do out here,” he said, referring to the few ships who were still fighting. “What are you going to do about the civilians?”

“Do about them?” Warrensburg asked. “If the planet surrenders, that’s when I’ll figure out what to ‘do about’ civilians.” He was being tetchy. “I don’t want to deal with them.”

“Do you want me to take the planet instead?” Yang asked.

Warrensburg laughed. “No. I’m sure command will give us some instructions on how to deal with civilians when they get here. Probably they’ll have us round them up and ship them off to some frontier planet for hard labor.”

Yang winced a little, a motion that Warrensburg saw. “Well, it’s better than just killing them,” Warrensburg said. “I think this will be an effective lesson about not settling too close to the corridor.”

“That was the goal,” Yang said with a deep frown.

“We clear on the plan?” Warrensburg asked.

“Yes, sir. I expect Rear Admiral Merkatz will be back soon. I don’t think his injury is that serious.”

“Well, I’ll hope it’s nothing that a little time in a tank bed can’t cure.” Yang had no idea if going into a tank bed would cure a concussion faster, but he didn’t have any reason to think it would hurt.

“Yes, I hope so as well.”

Warrensburg ended the call, leaving Yang alone once again in charge of his section of the fleet. Luckily, most of the excitement had passed. He watched as Warrensburg’s C and D groups began to reorganize themselves again and start a slow trek inward towards the planet, while Yang focused on taking stock of his own two groups and sorting out what needed to be done to get them back in fighting shape. There was a lot of organizational work, especially when it came to dealing with those Alliance ships that had surrendered already.

A weird peace had descended on the system, with the fighting over with for now. Yang didn’t honestly expect it to break out again, though he had no desire to find out what landing on the planet would be like. Yang was even able to snatch an hour of sleep in a tank bed, which felt almost like a full night’s sleep, but less satisfying. He didn’t see Merkatz, and when he inquired about his status, the doctor told him that he shouldn’t be bothered, and that he was resting and recuperating well.

When Warrensburg got about halfway towards El Facil (making the journey at sub-light speeds, because there really wasn’t a rush, and going above lightspeed while in-system had proven to be a coordination challenge for his C and D groups) the situation changed. All of a sudden, the remainder of the Alliance fleet ships came rising up from the planet. They were on the opposite side of the planet from Warrensburg’s group, and they were accelerating away from him, clearly trying to flee.

Yang got Warrensburg on the line immediately. “Did the planet surrender?” he asked.

“I think their fleet is just running,” Warrensburg said, scratching his head. “Never seen this before.”

“Could it be a trap?” Yang asked. Perhaps they had some sort of automated defense on the planet, and when Warrensburg’s fleet came close enough, they would turn around and attack from both sides. That was the first thing his mind jumped to.

“No, I think they’re just being cowards.”

“What should we do, sir?”

“Give me your opinion. Merkatz would want me to ask you, so I will.”

Yang considered for a second. “You should keep going towards the planet. That’s our goal, anyway. Makes it easier if you don’t have to fight anyone on your way down.”

“True.”

“I can chase those ships down,” Yang said. “Stop them from leaving the system and meeting up with reinforcements of their own, at least. A and B are probably better suited to that task than C and D are.”

“I agree. Let’s do that. Good luck to you, Leigh.”

“Thank you. And good luck to you as well, Commander.” Yang saluted and ended the call, then addressed his sections of the fleet. “Let’s go above lightspeed. Prepare to intercept that group. I don’t think they’ll put up much of a fight, but we should be prepared anyway.” He felt the stardrive engage at its maximum power beneath him, and they were off again.

While they were on their way, chasing the Alliance fleet down, more ships launched from El Facil, scattering in all directions. When Yang had them looked at with their highest powered scopes, he saw that they were what looked like all of the merchant vessels that the planet had. For a small planet, it had a surprisingly large number, but perhaps that wasn’t an accident: after all, a planet with a population of only a few million simply didn’t have the manpower to have a fully self sufficient economy, so much of their goods would need to be imported, far more than a planet like Heinessen would.

It was actually a relief to see all the merchant ships leaving. Yang hoped that they had as much of the planet’s population on them as they could. He addressed his ships. “Ignore the merchant ships,” Yang said. “Our first and only priority are the rebel fleet ships.”

“We have the ability to split up and chase all of them down,” the captain of the Prinz der Luther said.

“We’re already thin on the ground as it is,” Yang said. “I don’t want to risk losing more ships by splitting up. Let’s stick together and stay focused.” There was a general assent at that, even though it was a flimsy excuse.

He didn’t think that any of the fleeing Alliance fleet ships presented any real danger to his battlegroup, but he had been searching for an excuse to let the merchant ships escape, and this was as good as any. He watched the civilians go, trying not to smile about it. Yang wasn’t sure if he had done “good” here precisely, but he had used his position to at least save these people. That, he had to suppose, was better than nothing.

By the time that they managed to round up all the Alliance fleet ships, the civilians had disappeared. They managed to capture a rear admiral for their trouble, which seemed to Yang to be a fair trade, since Merkatz was still concussed. While this was happening, Warrensburg was bringing his ships ever closer to El Facil itself.

Warrensburg had a bad time landing his ships on the planet. He hadn’t encountered air defense, but the airports had been overrun with civilians trying to escape the planet, so he was forced to descend onto the grassy plains outside the city limits. He encountered some resistance from the civilian population when he attempted to move by land vehicle and on foot into the city proper. Apparently, about half the population had managed to escape on the merchant ships, leaving the city strangely empty. When Warrensburg reported this to Yang, Yang had to keep himself from appearing too happy about it.

Yang was glad he didn’t have to deal with it. Warrensburg told him to stay in space and wait for their reinforcements, which Yang was all too happy to do. There was a lot of work to be done, even while not dealing with the planet, and Yang was exhausted after just a short time. He hated being overwhelmed with nitpicky logistical details, but he didn’t have anyone else to pass them off to.

Before the reinforcements arrived, Yang was finally allowed to speak to Merkatz. He found him in the cabin that he was using aboard the Prinz der Luther, having ordered the doctor to release him from the infirmary, at the very least. When Yang knocked on the door, Merkatz sounded happy for the company, calling out, “Come in.”

The room was almost pitch black, except for the red glow of the exit light above the door. “Do you want me to turn on the light, sir?” Yang asked.

“Oh, Leigh, I’m glad you’re here,” Merkatz said. He was sitting at his desk, drinking a glass of water. He was dressed, but not in his full uniform. “And, sorry, no about the light. It gives me a splitting headache. I’ve been told to spend my time sitting in the dark doing nothing.”

“Should I not bother you?” Yang asked.

“There’s only so much sitting in the dark and doing nothing that I can bear,” Merkatz said. “Take a seat, if you like.” He motioned to the other chair, and Yang sat down across from him.

“How are you feeling, sir?”

“I’ve had worse injuries, but they were all far less annoying. The doctor wouldn’t let me hear about what’s going on outside. I assume that everything is going well?”

Yang gave him the two minute summary of most things that had happened since Merkatz had given him command. It was hard to tell what Merkatz was thinking, because it was hard to see his face in the darkness of the room, but Yang thought he saw him frown when he told him about the changed orders to capture the planet.

“It’s mostly been going well, though, sir.”

“I’m glad to hear it. No one’s given you any trouble?”

“No, sir. Aside from rounding up the stragglers and catching the rebel fleet ships that tried to escape, it’s mostly been quiet.”

“That’s good, that’s good.”

“Command says they’re going to send us back, once the reinforcements arrive.”

“I figured they would,” Merkatz said. “We’re not equipped to be an occupying force, and we’re due back on Odin.”

“I promise on the return trip I’ll get Warrensburg to run positioning drills for you.”

Merkatz chuckled a little. “I’m sure everyone will appreciate that. How is Warrensburg holding up?”

“Fine, I think,” Yang said.

“Is something the matter, Leigh?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer, sir.”

“Although you’re the first person I’ve had a real conversation with in days, I still don’t have the strength to pry your secrets out of you,” Merkatz said. “Either tell me, or don’t.”

“Over a million civilians escaped the planet,” Yang said, scratching his head. 

Merkatz raised an eyebrow. “And how did that happen?”

Yang wasn’t entirely sure what tack he should take. He respected Merkatz, and wanted him to be prepared in case this all came down on his head. “I let them go,” Yang said, coming off as rather defensive, even though he hadn’t intended it.

Merkatz was silent for a long, long second. “You let them go,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m not sure I’m understanding this correctly,” Merkatz said. “I would love for you to enlighten me, Sub-lieutenant.” His voice was cold.

“Before Warrensburg landed on the planet, all of the remaining rebel fleet ships, and a huge number of merchant ships launched. I ordered the A and B groups to stay together and to only concentrate on capturing the rebel fleet ships. During that time, all of the merchant ships made it out of the starzone.”

“I see.” Merkatz was still cold. “And why did you do that?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t like the thought of condemning all those people to a life of hard labor in a frontier camp,” Yang said. “I didn’t think it hurt anything to let them go.”

Merkatz pinched the bridge of his nose, then winced. “And did you make it look like you were intentionally sending rebels on their merry way out of the starzone?” Merkatz asked. “Did you announce that you were giving them safe passage out?”

“Sir, I may have done something against official policy, but I’m not trying to get executed as a traitor,” Yang said, his voice dry. “I ordered everyone to prioritize military targets, and stay as a group for safety.”

“If you didn’t want this to be known, you shouldn’t have told me,” Merkatz said. “I don’t understand the game you’re playing.”

“I’m not playing a game, sir,” Yang said. “I’m telling you this because I respect you, and I want you to be prepared in case this comes down on your head.”

“You respect me, but not enough to follow the policy that I have sworn to uphold, while I  _ trusted _ you with command of my men.” Merkatz was angry, but Yang didn’t flinch back.

“This cost no one’s life, sir.”

“Damn you, Leigh,” Merkatz said. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Send you for a court martial?”

“I would prefer if you didn’t,” Yang said. “But I obviously can’t stop you.”

“You can’t?” Merkatz asked. “I assume you still have your sidearm on you.”

“I’m sorry that you now trust me so little as to imagine that I’d shoot you,” Yang said.

Merkatz deflated a little at that. “Why are you telling me this, Leigh?”

“Neither of us are stupid men, sir,” Yang said. “Eventually, you would leave this room and look back over the logs, and you would see what happened. It’s better if I tell you the truth now, rather than have you put the pieces together on your own. You would trust me even less, then.”

“And what do you expect me to do?” Merkatz said.

“I’m at your mercy,” Yang replied. “It’s an uncomfortable position for me to be in, but there are worse ones.”

“And if I do report you?”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to go to the firing squad or the labor camp satisfied that I exchanged my life for over a million people. That’s more than a fair trade. I’d make it again.” He lifted his chin slightly. It was slightly ironic. He had come to the Empire seeking to escape a life of forced labor, and here he was possibly throwing his life away again. 

Merkatz was silent for a long second. “How can I trust you as a soldier under my command, if you’re going to go around and do this the moment my back is turned?”

“I suppose you can’t, sir.”

“If someone had ordered you directly to capture those merchant ships, what would you have done?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “I like to imagine that I would have thought of something.”

“You like to imagine. You spend all day imagining treason?” 

“I think you’re being unfair, sir.”

“Am I?” Merkatz sighed. “And you think less of me because I would have done my duty.”

“I respect you very highly, sir,” Yang said. “That hasn’t changed.”

“What are you doing here, Leigh? You also swore an oath when you received your commission.” Some of the anger had gone out of him, and now he was merely disappointed.

“It’s a long and stupid story,” Yang said. “I would have preferred to be a historian, rather than a soldier.”

Merkatz shook his head. “What am I supposed to do with you, Leigh?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I hate that you are a brilliant young man, one who I personally like and  _ want _ to trust, but now know that I absolutely cannot trust.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“No, you’re not.”

“That’s true.” Yang scratched his head. “You can trust me,” he said. “You just have to understand--”

“I understand that we are not playing the same rules, von Leigh. By definition, that means we are not playing on the same team, even if I can see perfectly well what moves you’d make.”

Yang silently nodded.

“Get out, Leigh. I need some time to think about this.”

“Are you relieving me of command, sir?”

“No. Just get out.”

“Yes, sir,” Yang said. He stood, saluted sharply, and left, leaving Merkatz alone in the dark.

* * *

_ November, 479 IC, Iserlohn Fortress _

The return to Iserlohn was anticlimactic. Even after recovering enough from his concussion to return to active duty, Merkatz didn’t speak much to Yang. He let Warrensburg drill the remaining ships on positioning as soon as they were back in the relative safety of the corridor, having left El Facil, now occupied by a true ground force, far behind. Yang couldn’t say he was sad to see it go. 

Yang tried to relax during the journey. He felt relatively sure that Merkatz was not going to have him court martialed, but Merkatz also didn’t speak to him about his intentions, so Yang was forced to wonder. He didn’t like the state of uncertainty, but he also couldn’t do anything about it, so he tried to act as nonchalant as he could, while just wiping his sweaty palms on his uniform more often than was really reasonable.

At Iserlohn, their whole fleet essentially disbanded. A huge number of the ships would need to head to drydock for repair, some because of damage sustained, some simply coming due for routine maintenance. During this time of stasis, the soldiers who were not due for leave would be stationed either in a starship repair facility elsewhere or on Iserlohn, while soldiers who were due for leave would head first to Odin, then to wherever their ultimate destination was. Yang was headed to Odin with that group, but there were a few days of waiting on Iserlohn before the transport back to the capital.

He desperately wanted to talk to Reuenthal, but all communication, especially calls over the ansible, were monitored. He knew his letters were read by censors, so he kept them free of incriminating information. Just as he had said to Merkatz, he hoped that Reuenthal would figure out the subtext of what had happened from Yang’s actual text describing the official orders he had given. But no matter what he wrote down, that was no substitute for talking to Reuenthal face to face. He wanted to do that regardless of anything that had happened.

All the free time that he had on Iserlohn meant that Yang ended up back in the same bar he had lurked in on his first visit to the fortress. This time, he was even more distracted, and wasn’t even pretending to read. He had his notebook open in front of him, but the page was mostly blank. He had written a couple of words, then violently scribbled them out as he decided that he changed his mind about what he wanted to say. He was drumming his pen against the paper when a vaguely familiar shadow approached him.

“Sub-lieutenant von Leigh?” Oberstein asked, getting his attention.

“Oh, Commander Oberstein! I didn’t see you come in.” Yang stood and saluted, smiling. “It’s nice to see a friendly face around here, sir.”

Oberstein seemed nonplussed by that. “May I sit?”

“Of course.” They both sat down. Yang had specifically picked a booth far in the back of the bar, so they were out of sight and hearing of the few other patrons. “Did Eisenach send you to check up on me again?”

“No,” Oberstein said. “I heard several pieces of news concerning you.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask.”

Oberstein pulled out a folded piece of paper from his pocket and slid it across the table to Yang, who opened it up, squinting to read it in the dim light of the bar. It was a printout of a page of transfer orders, the type of thing that was sent through the Iserlohn central computer to ensure that every soldier coming and going through the fortress ended up in the right place, at the right time. This one had Yang’s picture on it, smiling uncomfortably in his official ID photo. Oberstein had circled the relevant information: down in the bottom corner, Yang’s transfer was listed. From Rear Admiral Merkatz’s fleet to Ministry of War, Strategic Planning Division, Odin. The tickbox for “promotion” was checked.

“Congratulations, Lieutenant,” Oberstein said, voice very dry.

Yang put the paper down on the table. “Thank you for the congratulations, though I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to see this information until my actual CO told me.”

“Am I wrong in thinking that you and Rear Admiral Merkatz are not on speaking terms at the moment?”

“I wasn’t aware that my relationship with Rear Admiral Merkatz was subject to public attention.”

“I am capable of reading the encounter report and making my own assumptions,” Oberstein said.

“And what assumptions would those be?”

“You performed far above your station, and yet Merkatz has requested a transfer for you. If he were pleased with your performance, as most others would be, he would keep you. Therefore, there must be a conflict there.”

“You think that I performed well, at El Facil? I suppose I should be gratified that you think so.”

“I did not say that,” Oberstein replied.

Yang rubbed the back of his head. “Oh.” It was clear that Oberstein saw through Yang just as Merkatz would have.

“From everything that I have seen, you are too intelligent to make mistakes like the one you made at El Facil. You embarrassed the imperial fleet.”

“Perhaps there is a reason why sub-lieutenants are not often given command of four hundred ships,” Yang said mildly. “Mistakes are made.”

“It’s quite lucky that your inexperience provides a convenient excuse,” Oberstein said. “Further along in your career, and this would have cost you.”

“I think it a small price to pay.”

Oberstein stared at him, and in the darkness of the bar, Yang thought he saw his left eye flash red for a second, though perhaps it was just an odd trick of the light. “No,” Oberstein said. “If you were asked to pay a price, it would be too high.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Yang said. He took a sip of his beer.

“You may wish to be the humblest servant of the Kaiser,” Oberstein said, “but you are also a servant of all twenty five billion people the Kaiser rules. If they were to lose a talented and faithful servant such as you to a  _ mistake _ , the universe would be far worse off.”

Yang looked at Oberstein steadily. “If you say that the balance of potential future actions for many always outweighs immediate action for a few, what reason does anyone have to do anything?”

Oberstein didn’t flinch from Yang’s gaze. “There are many sacrifices that are worth making, but they should rarely be made on a whim. The universe can rejoice that things turned out well now, but you should avoid making such mistakes in the future.”

“I will keep that in mind, sir,” Yang said.

“Your new posting should suit you well,” Oberstein said, switching gears, though his tone remained flat. “It’s a coveted one.”

“I will try to make the best of it,” Yang said. “Do you ever come to Odin?”

“On occasion.”

“I hope you’ll come see me, then,” Yang said. “It’s good to have someone to talk to.”

“I am glad we seem to understand each other.”

“Yes, I think we do,” Yang said. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry to everyone who last chapter was like "aw I'm glad Merkatz is Yang's mentor, that's really fun". I wanted to say lol that's not going to last very long. But that would have been spoilers :p
> 
> Anyway congratulations to Yang for making it one whole chapter before doing a treason. Good job. Merkatz doesn't want to completely destroy Yang b/c he personally likes him but he's also like "oh my god this man cannot be trusted on the front lines, he needs to go somewhere else until he can learn how to behave". yang wen-li timeout.
> 
> Yang thinks he and Oberstein are operating on the same wavelength, but they absolutely are not lmao. Yang is capable of making friends with like, anybody, but you have to think. has anyone ever actually considered oberstein their friend? lmao. "nice to see a friendly face" yang your standards are on the FLOOR.
> 
> none of the numbers on this show make any sense whatsoever. in the gaiden ep abt el facil (spiral labyrinth #1) it looks like there's like 15 ships that evacuate all 3 million people. lol. it don't make no cents luv. anyway, I also moved the date of the el facil incident to be more convenient to me. don't worry about the dates of anything too much >.>
> 
> I tried to hint in part 2 that things on el facil did not go nearly as well for the citizens of the planet in this timeline. sucks to suck if you ended up stuck on the planet, which way more people did here b/c yang wasn't there on the ground to help organize everyone and escape, so it probably ended up turning into riots w/ everyone trying to get onto any ship that would take them. and then people who got left behind... well... not an ideal time, we can say, I suppose
> 
> Merkatz ends up with the bleeding head wound b/c it's plot convenient lmao. had to use that excuse up real quick
> 
> the names of the ships that Warrensburg and Yang/Merkatz end up transferring to are Prinz der Luther and Prinz der Wale. In the song 'the coast of high barbaree'-- there were two lovely ships / from old england came / blow high, blow low, and so sail we / one was the prince of luther / the other prince of wales / cruising down the coast of the high barbaree
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful helpful Lydia for beta reading + idea bouncing. More treason @bit.ly/shadowofheaven . um really nothing related to this at all @bit.ly/arcadispark . I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter. see ya


	3. Make a Mess, Then Go Home and Get Clean

_ November, 479 IC, Odin _

Yang wasn’t quite returning to Odin in disgrace, but he didn’t want anyone on the planet to see him until he had picked up the pieces of his life and gotten them back into some semblance of order. His first priority was to rent a room on the outskirts of the capital. Luckily, there were more than a few boarding houses that catered to military personnel, and Yang found a house on Linbergstrause rented out by two nice old ladies. He chose it because the rooms were furnished and a daily dinner was included in his rent. Since Yang had never cooked in his life, he knew it was either a boarding house like this, or he would eat out every day, and the boarding house seemed like the preferable choice for his budget.

He liked his rented room. It was quite cozy, especially when he got the fire going, and it had a nice view looking out onto the garden and street. It was about a mile walk from the commuter rail station that would take him into the capital proper and then to the Ministry of Military Affairs building, but he didn’t mind the walk, even though it was the middle of winter. He just bundled up so much that he looked rather comical.

On his first day at his new posting, Yang was introduced to his new CO, Commodore Bronner, who ran what was formally called the Tactical Analysis/Personnel Intelligence unit, down in one of the basement levels of the Ministry of War building. Bronner was a slender man, with an owl-like expression, and he peered at Yang with a kind of distaste, sitting at his desk in his dimly lit office, surrounded by glowing computer screens and neat stacks of thick binders.

“You come to me highly recommended, Lieutenant von Leigh,” Bronner said. “Which seems odd to me.”

“May I ask why you say so, sir?” Yang asked, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. He hoped that he hadn’t gotten himself assigned under someone who he would have difficulty working with.

Bronner steepled his hands. “If Rear Admiral Merkatz liked your front line command abilities and your personality so much, he shouldn’t have been in such a rush to recommend you to me. Promotion is easier on the front lines than it is here. He’s not stifling your career, but he’s not doing it many favors, either.”

“Perhaps he figured I would be well suited to the work here,” Yang said.

“Let me read you a selection from his letter,” Bronner said, and opened up the top, thick binder on his desk. Yang caught a glimpse of a photo of Merkatz, and then Bronner flipped to a bookmarked page, on which was a letter with Merkatz’s official letterhead. “Von Leigh is a highly competent officer, who is able to quickly discern the true nature of any tactical situation and make recommendations based on what he sees. He has an almost uncanny understanding of a person’s strengths and weaknesses, and uses them to turn situations to his advantage, often in surprising and subtle ways that lead to him gaining the upper hand.

“I quite like him as a person, and if he were to make strategic or tactical recommendations to me, I would give them far more careful consideration than I would give to the thoughts of most fresh Academy graduates. Leigh is both quietly strong-willed and kind-hearted, and never makes decisions that would lead anywhere except for the maximum preservation of life. He does not carelessly throw away the lives of the soldiers under his command, but does not allow himself to hesitate in indecision, either.

“In my opinion, von Leigh would be a good fit working in your department. He has the skills required to make proper use of himself there, and I think that he would benefit in other ways, as well. It would not hurt him to learn how other people interpret tactical situations, and, in the future, when he returns to the front lines, it may be to his advantage to have a familiarity with the personalities of our high command, and the tactics of the rebel fleet.

“As a personal note, Bronner, I  _ trust _ that you will know how to nurture his talents in the correct direction. And I  _ trust _ that he will work well as a talented and honest officer in your staff, under your supervision. Incidentally, I also  _ trust _ that this letter will somehow find its way into Lieutenant von Leigh’s possession.” Bronner put the binder down and stared out at Yang with his steely eyes. “There’s more, but it’s not relevant. What do you think of that, von Leigh?”

Yang scratched the back of his head. “I’m grateful that Rear Admiral Merkatz thinks so highly of me.”

“Rear Admiral Merkatz is putting you with me in the hopes that I can straighten you out,” Bronner said flatly. “You are a very, very lucky man.”

Playing ignorant was not going to work here. “In what way, sir?”

“Merkatz has come to the conclusion that you are a humanitarian caught in the heat of the moment,” Bronner said. “It’s an interesting conclusion to come to, I’ll give him that.”

Yang was sweating a little under his uniform, but he still stood in front of the desk loosely, with his hands by his sides, and nodded at Bronner. “I’m grateful that he came to that conclusion as well.”

“Is he wrong?”

“Sir, it would be contrary to Merkatz’s valuation of my intelligence for me to say anything one way or the other.”

Bronner smiled, then, a thin smile. “I’m glad you understand. I also spoke to one of your former teachers, Captain Staden, to get a second opinion on you. Are you curious as to what he had to say?”

“It would be rude of me to inquire about whatever Captain Staden said to you in confidence.”

“Lieutenant, if you hadn’t realized by now that the reason Rear Admiral Merkatz has sent you to me is for you to realize that  _ there is no such thing as confidence _ yet, then perhaps he and Captain Staden were both mistaken in their assessments of your intelligence.”

“Then, yes, I am curious, sir,” Yang said after a second.

Bronner pulled out another binder from the pile. “He was amused by calling you the 479 Mafia, but then said that the 479 Misfits might be more appropriate.” He read from the first page in the binder. “Oskar von Reuenthal, number one in the class, undefeated in strategic warfare simulations, except for when he faced you, especially in your extracurriculars. Grandson of Count Marbach, but estranged. Close ties to the family of Count Mariendorf.

“August Samuel Wahlen. Common family. Third place in his class. Not undefeated in his strategic warfare games, but talented. Showed a marked improvement after his sophomore year, perhaps due to extra practice.

“Fritz Joseph Bittenfeld--”

“Sir, I’m aware of who my friends are,” Yang said dryly. “I get the point.”

“Staden provided me with all of your game transcripts,” he said. “I do mean all of them.”

“I suppose you want me to ask you what you thought?”

“I’ll say that if I were suddenly handed this wealth of material on a rebel fleet admiral to analyze, I would feel like I knew him well enough to invite him over for a riveting discussion over coffee.”

“Indeed, sir.” Yang was coming to the conclusion that Bronner was a supremely strange man. He was looking at Yang like he enjoyed making Yang squirm, but Yang wasn’t really squirming.

“Staden thought that you behaved the way you did in your games for your own amusement, but I wouldn’t say you were amusing yourself at El Facil, were you, Leigh?”

“Merkatz would not trust me to command if he thought that I was treating his men’s lives like a game,” Yang said.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a game,” Bronner said. “I think it’s something else entirely.” He looked sharply at Yang. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their entrances and their exits, and--” he took an inhale of breath, and swept his arm out in front of him-- “their audience. What part are you playing?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said.

“I tried to find your Phezzani birth record,” Bronner said, switching both tone and gear abruptly. “Curiously, I didn’t find any Hank von Leigh born on Phezzan. Do you have anything to say to that?”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Bronner’s smile, which had been thin, cracked open as he chuckled. “It pains me to say that I understand why both Captain Staden and Rear Admiral Merkatz seem to like you, even against their better judgement.”

“Er, I’m glad to hear it, sir.”

“That doesn’t mean that I like you, though,” Bronner said. “And don’t think for a second that I will ever trust you.”

“I understand, sir,” Yang said.

“If I see you step a single toe out of line, the consequences for you will be dire. And not only you-- for everyone you have associated with, as well.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Yang said.

Bronner smiled again. “You’re quite welcome. You’ve been given a very interesting second chance here. Merkatz could have had you go anywhere else. There are plenty of places where you could do no harm; this is decidedly not one of them. He wants you to feel temptation, and learn to resist it.” Bronner was somewhat animated now. “It’s almost cruel of him.”

“Perhaps,” Yang said. “But I should still thank him for recommending me here.”

He earned another chuckle from Bronner. “You do that. I believe he’s hopeful that after you’ve had your punishment with me, you can be friends with him once again.”

“This is a punishment, sir?”

“I think that Merkatz believes that anyone forced to associate with me is being punished.”

“Why do you say that, sir?”

“I was engaged to his daughter for two years,” Bronner said, closing and restacking all the binders on his desk. “There were personality conflicts.”

“I see,” Yang said. He scratched his head.

“If you do speak to Merkatz in person, and if you should happen to see his daughter, please tell her I said hello.”

“If Merkatz recommended me here for my intuition, perhaps I should trust that this feels like a trap.”

“No,” Bronner said. “It’s not. Cora and I parted on good terms.”

“I have no choice but to believe you.”

Another thin smile from Bronner. “Oh, I don’t think that’s true at all,” he said. He opened up yet another binder on his desk, this one quite thick. Yang saw his own photograph and winced at the vast trove of information that had apparently been collected on him. From the binder, Bronner removed a few typed sheets and slid them towards Yang, who squinted at them, then had to laugh a little. “You’re already very good at determining which sources of information can be trusted.”

“I always wondered what the person grading this thought,” Yang said, looking over the graded comments on the essay that he had turned in while taking the Imperial Officers’ Academy entrance exam, the one where he had pointed out the fact that the battle he had been asked to analyze was completely falsified. The grader had been impressed and had written that he recommended Yang for a possible career in intelligence. Funny that that was where Yang had ended up. “They really should have taken more points off for my grammar.”

“Yes, it’s almost as though imperial isn’t your native tongue, or something,” Bronner said. “How odd.”

“Honestly,” Yang said, sliding the graded paper back across to him, “when I was Staden’s TA, I graded the SW post-mortems for several sections of the engineering cohort. I’ve seen far worse.”

“Truly the standards of admission to the IOA have declined.” Bronner returned the papers to the binder and closed it. “Speaking of tests, I suppose I should give you your first one. See how well you’ll fare underneath me.”

“Yes, sir,” Yang said.

Bronner slid another piece of paper across the desk, one with a picture of an imperial admiral, dressed in an older style of uniform, labeled Christopf von Michaelsen. “Prepare me a report on this man.”

Yang raised his eyebrows. “Do you have anything specific you’re looking for?”

“I want to know what you’ll produce. I’m not going to give you any instructions.”

“Stunning pedagogical technique.”

“I’m not trying to teach you anything,” Bronner said. “And don’t be smart with me.”

“Yes, sir,” Yang said. 

When Yang sat down at his new desk and tried to get started on his assignment, first just running a simple search on the man’s name in the official database, he found a wealth of weird information. Particularly, Michaelsen had been murdered in his office, in the middle of the day, when there had been both ten thousand potential witnesses and ten thousand potential suspects. It was very odd.

Several of his new coworkers came by to introduce themselves and see what Yang was working on. All of them were curious about him, and Yang wouldn’t have been surprised if each one of them started their own little binder labeled “Hank von Leigh” to keep in their own desks. They also all expressed surprise at the assignment that Bronner had given him-- without fail, when he mentioned the name, each of them said, with a perfectly neutral expression, something along the lines of, “Hm, never heard of that one before,” and then wished him good luck.

It was a series of strange interactions, and by the end of the day, Yang was relieved to creep back to his rented room, share dinner with his landladies and the few other tenants of the boarding house, then pass out.

* * *

Yang couldn’t put off his social obligations on Odin forever, though since he had the weird feeling that he had returned to Odin in disgrace, he almost didn’t want to fulfil them. He realized that he was being ridiculous, though, and so he called Mittermeyer on Friday night. He was sitting in his room, on his bed, with one hand flipping through his work notes on the guy he was supposed to be researching, the other holding his phone to his ear. Mittermeyer picked up after two rings.

“Leigh!” Mittermeyer said immediately, sounding almost frantic.

“Hey, Mittermeyer,” Yang said. Mittermeyer’s wild greeting had not managed to shake out the laconic tone from Yang’s voice.

“What the hell are you doing?” Mittermeyer asked. “Where are you?”

“What?” Yang asked.

“Some MP came to the IOA to grill me about you,” Mittermeyer said. “I thought something had happened to you. I tried to get in touch with anybody else, to see what was going on, but I couldn’t reach-- Gods above, Leigh.” Some of the panic was leaving Mittermeyer’s voice.

“Oh, jeeze,” Yang said, rubbing the back of his head. “Sorry about that.”

“What’s going on?” he asked, slightly calmer now.

“I got reassigned; I’m back on Odin. I think you probably met my boss.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story.” And one that Yang probably shouldn’t tell over the phone. “It was kind of a promotion, but-- you know what, better to just tell you in person. Anyway, I’m working at the Ministry of War now.”

“Okay.” Mittermeyer sounded extremely confused. “Have you told anyone else?”

“No. Look, it’s really stupid,” Yang said, feeling flustered now himself. “I’m going to feel embarrassed when I tell Reuenthal, so I’ve been putting it off.”

“At least write him a letter or something,” Mittermeyer said. “I’ll send him one retracting the one I sent in a panic, but you should let him know you’re okay.”

“Why didn’t you try calling me?” Yang asked. “You probably shouldn’t have jumped to the assumption that I was dead.”

“I didn’t jump to the assumption that you were dead,” Mittermeyer said. “I jumped to the assumption that contacting you would be a bad decision, because there was an MP cornering me after I left SW class, wanting to talk about our game.”

“I’m really sorry about that,” Yang said. “What did the guy you talked to look like?”

“Skinny, big glasses, weird nose, short brown hair, probably in his early thirties. Introduced himself as Lieutenant Carl Tamar.”

“Yeah, no, that was my boss,” Yang said. “His real name is Deitrich Bronner, and he’s actually a commodore. And not an MP.”

Yang heard the sound of Mittermeyer putting down his phone and swearing. After a second, he picked the phone back up. “Where did you say you were working?” Mittermeyer asked.

“The Personnel Intelligence unit,” Yang said. 

Mittermeyer let out a rush of breath. “Okay. Okay.”

“Yeah. I know. You want to meet up to talk? I’d rather see you in person.”

“Of course, yeah. I’m free tomorrow after physicals.”

“Meet you at Joseph’s at six?”

They agreed to meet, and Yang hung up, feeling suddenly exhausted. He hadn’t meant to worry Mittermeyer, but he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that he had gotten him brought under suspicion.

He spent the rest of his evening writing apologetic notes to his friends whom Mittermeyer had contacted in a panic, making the subject line “READ THIS BEFORE WHATEVER MITTERMEYER SENT YOU” with the hope of preventing them from panicking, if they hadn’t yet read Mittermeyer’s letters. He was sure that he was going to get an earful from Reuenthal as soon as his ship was back in contact with the rest of the Empire, but that would be a problem for the future.

Yang flopped on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. He should probably talk to Count Mariendorf, as well, but he was still putting that off. He hoped that Bronner hadn’t gone to bother him. Yang liked the count, and it would have been even more embarrassing to drag him into this. Maybe he could pay them a visit on Sunday.

He thought about all of this, then picked up some of his work notes and thought about those, too, until the words stopped making sense, and then he fell asleep, fully clothed, on top of his sheets.

* * *

Joseph’s was exactly the same as Yang remembered it, and it felt odd to him that he had last been here less than half a year ago. He sat down at the same booth where he had always sat with Reuenthal and Mittermeyer, and he laid his damp hat and gloves down next to him, ordering a beer as he waited for Mittermeyer to show up. The waitress recognized him, and Yang had to smile and say that he was just back for a visit, feeling awkward about the whole thing. Although he had thought he missed the IOA, now he was distinctly uncomfortable, as though it was a too-tight skin.

Mittermeyer showed up, looked around, spotted Yang immediately, and smiled broadly as he sat down across from him. “I was half worried you weren’t going to show up,” Mittermeyer said.

“You think I’d abandon you?”

“I think I’ve been right to have nightmares that you’ve gotten yourself into a horrible trouble.” Mittermeyer stripped off his own gloves and hat.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Yang said.

“I might have, at one time, believed you when you said that, but now I most certainly do not.” The waitress came back over, and Mittermeyer ordered a beer for himself. When she left, he said, “Should I be saluting you, Lieutenant?” He nodded to the new stripe on the shoulder of Yang’s uniform.

“I’m not here on business,” Yang said. “But I’ll take that as a congratulations.”

“You said this was ‘kind of’ a promotion,” Mittermeyer said. “I am expecting you to tell me exactly what you meant by that. Did things not work out with Rear Admiral Merkatz? I thought you said in your letters that you got along with him.”

“I did,” Yang said. “I mean, I think I probably still do, but he’s pissed at me.”

“I’m dying of curiosity.”

“Did you hear about El Facil?”

“Only what was in the newspapers.”

Yang rubbed the back of his neck. “Near the end of the fight, Merkatz’s flagship got hit, and he was injured, so he ended up giving me command of about half his fleet.”

Mittermeyer nodded, duly impressed.

“Anyway, that was mostly fine, and I didn’t lose any ships, but while we were rounding up the rebel fleet ships that were trying to escape the system…” Yang shrugged. “I made some command choices that led to about half the civilian population of the planet escaping.” In a very flat voice, he added, “By accident.”

Mittermeyer seemed to not know how to respond to that, and took a long drink from his beer, then rubbed his eyes. “By accident,” he repeated.

Yang was staring out over the bar, and his eyes landed on someone who had been there before he arrived. He was dressed in civilian clothing, which was odd because most of the people who came to Joseph’s were Academy students, and he was sitting alone at the bar counter. He didn’t look in Yang’s direction, but Yang could tell that he was there for him. After all, Yang had announced over the phone exactly when and where he would be meeting Mittermeyer, and he wasn’t surprised that his phone was tapped.

“My thoughts on how it happened are somewhat irrelevant,” Yang said lightly. “Regardless, Rear Admiral Merkatz decided that I needed a change of venue.”

“I see.”

“I’m grateful that he merely had me reassigned,” Yang said.

Mittermeyer shook his head. “People have been shot over less, you know.”

“I’m very well aware.” Yang tilted his beer glass towards their eavesdropper, and raised his eyebrows to get Mittermeyer’s attention. Mittermeyer nodded slightly. “I was spared from greater embarrassment because in all other respects, I performed well in a capacity far above my actual rank, and because Merkatz believes it was an honest error which will not happen again.”

“I’m not going to ask you to predict the future.”

“Probably for the best.”

“You really scared me, Leigh.”

“I’m sorry about that.” He really was, and he ruffled his hair nervously. “I really don’t want to drag you down with me.”

“You got a promotion,” Mittermeyer pointed out. “That’s not exactly being dragged down.”

“Failing upwards, then,” Yang said. He sighed a little. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Leigh,” Mittermeyer said. “Don’t be stupid.”

“In what sense?”

“In every sense.” Mittermeyer shook his head, long blond hair falling about his eyes. “For one thing, yeah, you were stupid and I hope you see that. For another, vanishing off the face of the universe wouldn’t do me any favors.”

Yang nodded. “Yeah, I really am sorry for making you worried.”

“I thought Staden had told you that you needed to toe the line.”

Yang shrugged, rather miserably. “You’re going to yell at me about this, too?”

“You’re my friend,” Mittermeyer said. “You don’t even know how much I’ve missed having you around this year. Whatever else happens, I don’t want to see you ending up--” He cut himself off, clearly agitated. “You get that, right?”

“You’re doing a better job of making me feel actually sorry than anyone else has thus far,” Yang said. “Or guilty, anyway.”

Mittermeyer shook his head and took another drink from his beer. “You’re smart, but I’m sorry to report that you’re also an idiot.”

“I know.” Yang studied Mittermeyer. He wished that they could talk free of supervision, because there was so much that he actually wanted to say. He thought that Mittermeyer would have a chance of understanding why he had done what he had done-- maybe Mittermeyer already did understand, but was putting on a facade for their audience; or maybe Mittermeyer considered his life more valuable than the lives he had saved at El Facil; or maybe Mittermeyer really did just value the oath that he had sworn to the Goldenbaum dynasty. It was hard to tell, and Yang wished he could pry all of it apart. He tried to communicate his feelings in the most honest way he could. “You know, when I was at school, there were a lot of times when I thought that I was maybe making a mistake. But I think I can justify my choices, now.”

Mittermeyer frowned at him. “Your choices?”

“Leaving Phezzan for my own sake,” Yang said.

“And why would that need to be justified?”

“I thought it was selfish, and I might end up doing things that I regretted. But I think that I’m capable of doing more good in the universe here than harm.”

Mittermeyer narrowed his eyes. “Should I ask you to clarify that statement?”

“Probably not,” Yang admitted. He drank some more of his beer, then looked down at the table. “Do you remember the conversation that we had, in my room after the hunting trip in your freshman year?”

“I’m not sure I could ever forget it. And I’m not sure I want to know why you’re bringing it up now.”

“I said then that I knew you were a good person,” Yang said. “I still believe that to be true.”

“I didn’t understand what you meant back then.” Mittermeyer was frowning as he looked at him. “I’m not honest.”

“There’s no such thing as honesty,” Yang said. 

“Don’t say shit like that,” Mittermeyer said.

“Well, it’s true as anything else.” Yang slowly began ripping a napkin on the table to shreds. Mittermeyer watched him do this, clearly uncomfortable. “I just think that you can understand me.”

“What do you want from me, Leigh?” Mittermeyer asked. “What are you trying to get me to say?”

“Nothing,” Yang said. “Really, Mittermeyer. I am sorry I got you wrapped up in my mess, and I don’t want any chance of ruining your career as well as mine. I’m just…” He shrugged. “You’re my friend, and I think we understand each other. That’s all. I just wanted you to know that.”

“Of course I know that.” Mittermeyer wasn’t really looking at him, and was instead staring out over the heads of all the students at the bar. Mittermeyer’s discomfort seemed to be with more than with just the current topic of conversation.

“Are you okay, Mittermeyer?” Yang asked. 

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, without you and Reuenthal here,” Mittermeyer said. It had the air of a confession. “I don’t know what I’m doing with myself.”

Yang frowned slightly. “Now I have to ask you what you mean.”

“You know what I mean.” Mittermeyer shook his head. “My head’s clearer when I’m here by myself. I can think about what the future should look like, without getting distracted.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘should’ either.”

“Will you just listen for a second?”

“Yeah, sorry, go ahead.”

“Over the summer, I guess I spent a lot of time talking to Evangeline,” Mittermeyer said. “She was way nicer than she used to be.”

Yang winced a little. “My fault, maybe. When I was at your house last winter, I told her that you’d probably appreciate her changing the way she acted around you.”

“You weren’t wrong.” Mittermeyer took a drink and didn’t meet Yang’s eyes. “She is more pleasant than I gave her credit for, initially.”

“So, what are you saying?”

“I don’t know,” Mittermeyer said. “Maybe it would be good for me to be with her.”

“You really think it would be good for you?”

“It would make my parents happy. It would make her happy. It seems like the right thing to do.”

“Would it make you happy?”

“I don’t know,” Mittermeyer said. “And you can tell me as much as you want about my moral right to be happy, but…” He trailed off and shook his head. 

“You don’t sound happy.”

“That doesn’t really matter.”

“I think it matters far more than most other things.”

“You were just saying that you were worried about justifying selfish decisions,” Mittermeyer said. “So am I. And maybe there are some selfish decisions that I really shouldn’t justify.”

“I can’t stop you,” Yang said. “But I don’t want to see you make yourself miserable, either.”

“I’m not miserable.”

“Sure.”

“And it’s rich of you to say that. I don’t want to see you get in trouble, and yet you go off and do… that.”

“Honest mistakes happen,” Yang said. “That’s always going to be true.” As soon as the words left his mouth, though, he regretted them, because he saw that Mittermeyer was misinterpreting what he was saying. 

“So maybe I should try not to make any more,” Mittermeyer said. “Maybe both of us should try not to make any more.”

Yang slumped a little. “Mittermeyer…” he said.

“I’m not good at this, Leigh,” he said, shaking his head.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He moved his hands, holding both flat in the air, one above the other. “It’s like there’s all these gaps, between what’s real, and what’s said-- or what’s right, and what’s happening-- or what you mean and what you understand-- and what people see when they look at you, and who you are-- there’s so many of them. You’re good at living somewhere in between. You don’t care that there’s a gap, or if you do, you don’t mind living on both levels at once.” Mittermeyer shook his head. “Reuenthal’s good at it, too. I’m not. I hate it. I hate all of it.”

“I’m sorry,” Yang said.

“I’m not saying I hate you,” Mittermeyer said. “And I guess you’re right, that I do understand you, because I can see, or I think I see, all of you. You want to be honest, too, I guess.”

Yang nodded, waiting for Mittermeyer to continue. He seemed frustrated, and he dropped his hands to the table in fists, shoulders hunched forward.

“I don’t want people to misunderstand me. I don’t like that gap.” He shook his head and took another drink of his beer, finishing the glass. “It’s some kind of stupid dream to say that I wish people could understand where I am,” he said, holding up his hand again. “So the alternative is to be where people understand.” And he raised his hand up to the surface level. “It’s honest, that way. At least it can be that.”

“You don’t sound like you want me to give my opinion.”

“What do you want to say, Leigh?” 

Yang considered very carefully what he wanted to say, because he wasn’t sure that he would have another opportunity, and he was aware that he was being observed. He could understand why Mittermeyer hated all of this-- the doublespeak, the implications. But it was all they could have. He ran his hand through his hair, then leaned back a little and closed his eyes as he spoke. Not having to look at Mittermeyer provided a kind of clarity, the dark space behind his eyes where he could piece together his ideas without Mittermeyer’s sad blue-eyed gaze.

“Look, Mittermeyer,” Yang began, “we’re all treading water in the ocean. We can see each other, and speak to each other, but nobody can see how hard everyone is kicking and moving underneath the surface, just to keep their heads up. Everyone has to swim like this their whole lives, because there’s no shore you can climb out onto-- or maybe there is, and no one wants to climb out onto it, because we’ve all been swimming around naked and everyone’s afraid to get out and let people see. You just have to call out to find other people you think you can swim next to without them kicking you by accident, or drowning you on purpose. 

“You can’t just pretend like you’re only a head floating on the surface of the water. You can’t just stop moving your arms and legs because you don’t want people to feel them moving and know they exist. You can’t just cut off your own head and pretend like that’s all of you.” He sighed and opened his eyes. “We don’t get mad at icebergs for only coming part way out of the water. We just have to understand that there’s more there than we can see. It’s when we don’t understand that, that’s what will sink a ship.”

Mittermeyer was frowning. “You were right; I didn’t want to hear any of what you had to say. Less in the mood for metaphor than I thought I was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Mittermeyer said. “I’m sorry for being an ass here. You didn’t come here to listen to me whine.”

“I’m happy to listen,” Yang said. “I just don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

“Have you talked to anybody else about this?”

“No.”

“You should.”

Mittermeyer stared down into his empty beer glass. “It’s one of those things that’s better discussed in person, isn’t it?”

“I don’t disagree entirely, but it’s not something you should just sit on, either. Have you been stewing on this for a whole semester?”

“I guess.”

“What brought it on?”

“An excess of self confidence,” Mittermeyer said. He wiped his hands on his own napkin, then crumpled it up and threw it on the table. “Without anybody else around, I convinced myself that I could be perfectly content.”

“The use of the past tense is interesting there.”

“Well, you’re here ruining it for me.”

“I’m sorry,” Yang said.

“I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”

“Interrupting your personal development.”

Mittermeyer laughed a little, and Yang smiled. “Sure. We’ll call it that.”

“If you want me to leave you alone, I will.”

“No, I’m glad you’re back on Odin,” Mittermeyer said nonchalantly. “Clearly you couldn’t keep away from me.”

“Of course, Mittermeyer. That’s exactly it.” Mittermeyer had his arms loosely folded on the table in front of him. Yang reached across the distance and put his hand on Mittermeyer’s left arm, giving it a brief but gentle squeeze. Mittermeyer’s expression changed for a second into something that approached desperation, but then he clamped it down and just smiled a neutral smile.

“You’re cruel to me, Hank von Leigh.”

“I know,” Yang said. “Though I suspect I’m less cruel by far than you are to yourself.”

“That’s my prerogative.” 

* * *

Yang didn’t end up going to see the Mariendorfs. He felt too strongly off-kilter from the conversation he had had with Mittermeyer, and he felt it was likely that the count or Hilde would ask how Reuenthal was doing, a question that Yang was suddenly completely unprepared to answer. He would give it another week, he decided, then tell them that he was back on Odin.

In the meantime, he decided to pour most of his energy into the work assignment he had been given. It had the exciting flavor of historical research, which he appreciated. He started with the obvious: personnel records that he had easy access to, looking up Michaelsen’s battle record and all of the positions he had held. He snooped through the  _ Peerage of the Galactic Empire _ book to see what family connections Michaelsen had, since he had a noble name, and discovered that he was indeed the successor to a barony, but had had his name struck from the family record before he could inherit for reasons that the  _ Peerage _ did not care to mention. 

Since Michaelsen had spent most of his time working as an officer in the Ministry of the Interior, Yang was only able to put together the barest of battle tactics analysis from his very brief stint on the front lines. Similarly, though his work in the Ministry of the Interior left a very long record of accomplishments, most of them were banal and efficient public works and decisions that could have been made by anyone. Michaelsen showed a talent for organization, Yang noted, and was well respected by his staff, but that gave him no hints as to why someone had shot him to death in his office in the middle of the day. 

Since this was an affair that had happened decades ago, Yang didn’t have the ability to interview anyone about it, though he would have liked to. 

The only lead that Yang had was that he had been struck from his family’s records for unknown reasons, around the time when he had been graduating from the IOA. Yang decided that he might as well start at the beginning, then, and asked around in his office where he might find old IOA yearbooks. His coworkers laughed at him, but showed him where they were found in the archive.

Yang loved the archive.

But before he got distracted by the miles and miles of files, books, and secrets within the huge archive, Yang pulled down the relevant years from the IOA yearbook and flipped through them, looking for the very young Michaelsen. Most of the photos in the book were completely mundane, even the ones that involved Michaelsen, but there was one, in his junior year yearbook, that caught Yang’s eye. 

It was a casual photo. The caption read “Analyzing the enemy’s movements!” and it showed several people, all cadets, leaning over a map and spread of documents laid out on a long table, pointing and arguing. What had attracted Yang’s attention was something that he didn’t even think that the photographer noticed, or it would have been cropped out. Michaelsen was leaning shoulder to shoulder with another cadet, who was just smiling rather than participating in the heated argument that the others were having. Just barely visible in the photograph, Yang could see that Michaelsen had his hand on the small of the other cadet’s back.

It could have been a casual thing. It could have been meaningless. 

Still, Yang searched the yearbook for the other cadet’s name, James von Harsburg, and looked up his service record. It was a dead end: he had been killed in action two years after graduating from the IOA. 

Yang had to wonder what exactly his boss was trying to get out of him, here. What was the angle that he was looking for? It seemed… somewhat unlikely that Bronner was trying to send Yang a message about being a homosexual, since Yang had not actually done anything that could lead him to suspicion. There had to be something else, then.

What would Bronner assign him this man for? He had an angle, just like the writers of the IOA entrance exam had an angle.

Yang had access to a photographic search, where he could input a few photos of a person and then have the computer search all of the records he had available for that face, even if he didn’t know their name, or their name wasn’t written in the captions. Hoping to turn up more information, Yang did that, using the photographs of the young Michaelsen as a starting point. 

A few results turned up, most individual photos that were useless and lacked relevant context. One of the images, though, was a staff photo showing Michaelson with two other men, taken at some kind of party for officers of the Ministry of the Interior, where Michaelsen had spent most of his career. In the center of the photo was a young man, about Michaleson’s age. He and Michaelson were glancing at each other. The other unidentified man was significantly older and appeared related to the man in the center. He was wearing a rather nasy expression and had his hand on the younger man’s shoulder with a clawlike grip. It was, again, an almost meaningless image, but it caught Yang’s attention. It was something, rather than nothing.

Yang ran an image search on those two people and felt like he had struck gold. The older man was Baron Wilhelm Siegmeister, and his son was Martin Siegmeister. In the photo, Martin was merely a lieutenant commander, but he rose to the rank of admiral before defecting alone to the Alliance. When Yang tried to look him up further, he found that most of his records had been expunged, or at least buried in classified archives that Yang did not (yet) have access to. It was a shame, but Yang was capable of working around that. 

He dug deeper into the father’s records, which were spotty, but that was because the father had worked for the Department of Social Discipline, which was a kind of shadow organization known for extrajudicially executing potential traitors to the Empire. Yang was beginning to understand why Bronner had assigned him this case.

The Baron Siegmeister had one other interesting thing in his file: several times during Martin’s childhood, the police had been called to his home. These police records were all searchable, still. Neighbors had been called to the house after hearing screaming, but no charges had ever been filed, officially. 

The picture that was being painted here was a grim one, though he had fallen down the wormhole of researching the Siegmeister family, rather than his intended target, Michaelsen.

Aside from the one photo, there wasn’t much to tie them together. Yang wished that he had access to personal documents, but the database he had access to had none of that. 

Siegmeister had defected to the Alliance after his wife and child died in a fire, during the night while they were in a hotel. Siegmeister himself had not been in the building, but the police report of the night had reference to a statement by him, so he had been in the area-- why would he not be at the same hotel his family was staying at? Was it arson, intended for him? Was it arson, intended just for his family? There were so many questions that Yang couldn’t answer. Immediately after this, Siegmeister had requested and received a transfer to the front lines, from which he had defected. Maybe he killed his own family in order to free himself to escape? Where did Michaelsen fit into this?

Maybe Yang had focused in too closely. Maybe he needed to look at the bigger picture. Siegmeister had defected in 419 IC. Yang didn’t have any records of what he was doing in the Alliance, but he wasn’t mentioned in any Phezzani newspapers,or copies of Alliance newspapers that, through Phezzan, ended up in the imperial archive. It was as though he had vanished from the universe almost entirely. But that couldn’t actually be the case, because Yang was fairly certain the Alliance would not hesitate to make use of a defecting admiral. He must have been providing some function there. 

Yang frowned deeply, sitting at his desk and tapping his pen hard against his paper. He was quite familiar with this time period in history, as it had been extensively covered in his classes at the IOA. The Alliance had had a long, sweeping string of victories over the Empire, culminating in the Second Battle of Tiamat. Most people attributed the success of the Alliance during this time to the brilliance of its star commander, Bruce Ashbey, who had been practically undefeated his entire life. There were plenty of photos of Ashbey in the archive, but Yang didn’t need to look them up to picture him: a vivacious young man, bold and handsome, redheaded and tall, almost always pictured next to one or more of his friends, who were all equally good looking. Twice married; twice divorced.

Yang realized that Bronner had been giving him a hint: “ _ He was amused by calling you the 479 Mafia, but then said that the 479 Misfits might be more appropriate. _ ” Bruce Ashbey and his friends, who had all graduated from the Alliance Officers’ Academy in 730 UC had been known as the Year 730 Mafia. When Bronner had said that Staden had called Yang that, Yang had simply thought it was a reference to him playing the Alliance in their game-- especially since all of Yang’s friends weren’t even in his same year. But no, Bronner was definitely telling him to connect the dots, as a kind of personal warning.

Bruce Ashbey had led the Alliance to overwhelming victory. 

Martin Siegmeister had defected to the Alliance.

Somehow, all of this led back to Christof Michaelsen, who was shot to death in his office years after the Second Battle of Tiamat.

And, of course, it was all a message from Bronner to Yang.

Yang didn’t have enough information to tell the truth, he decided, but he did have enough information to tell a story. And perhaps that was what Bronner was looking for. After all, if the records and archives contained “the truth”, and they had been wiped clean of most things that Yang could have used, perhaps there was no “truth” any more.

He had spent more than a week poring over the archives, trying to deconstruct and reconstruct the narrative. It was time to be done, he decided. He began to type his final conclusions.

That afternoon, Yang marched himself to Bronner’s dark office.

“Took you long enough,” Bronner said, when Yang handed him his neat binder, constructed in the style that Bronner seemed to prefer. “You were very thorough, which is a good thing.”

“You know that without looking at it?”

“You thought that a record of every file you accessed in the archive wasn’t being sent to me the minute you opened it?” Bronner asked. “I had your report open as you were writing it. I like your literary flair, though I’d advise you to cut it out when you submit actual reports for the fleet to use as advisory material.”

Yang couldn’t help but scowl. “I suppose you’ll tell me that there’s no such thing as privacy anymore, won’t you, sir?”

“You already knew that,” Bronner said, flipping through the binder, even though he had already seen all of its contents.

“Is it true, then, sir?” Yang asked. “I’m curious, now.”

“Hm?”

“Was Michaelsen running a spy ring? Was he feeding information to Siegmeister?”

“Oh, probably,” Bronner said. “Some of your logical leaps are unsubstantiated, but the locked files that you don’t have access to point to the same conclusion, so I suppose you did a good job.”

“Oh. Thank you, sir.”

“Why did you spend so much time looking at his family?” Bronner asked. “I thought you were going down a dead end.”

“I wanted to know why he had been struck from the family record. I thought it might give me a better basis for my analysis.”

“And did you find that out?”

Yang rubbed the back of his head. “Er. Not really.”

“But you spent  _ so much time _ looking,” Bronner stressed. “You must have some ideas.” He had a smile on his face that Yang felt was rather menacing.

“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” Yang said. He crossed his arms.

“Well, if you don’t even want to put forward any theories,” Bronner said. “Fine.” Bronner steepled his fingers. “It’s interesting that you drew a direct connection between Michaelsen and the 730 Mafia.”

“Why is that?” Yang asked.

“Because while you seem unwilling to speculate about Michaelsen’s personal motivations, you have no trouble speculating on Siegmeister’s, and on the Alliance’s side of the story, even though no official connections exist.”

“It seemed to me, sir, that you gave me this case as a personal warning. You specifically made a reference to my friends as the 479 Mafia.”

“I believe I called them the 479 Misfits, yes,” Bronner said. “Though, perhaps on the surface, you and your friend Lieutenant Eisenach are the only ones who immediately stand out.”

Yang frowned and was silent.

“You don’t have anything to say about that?”

“Sir, if you want me to reassure you that my friends are not involved in a spy ring, I’ll happily do so.”

“Your friend Oskar von Reuenthal was also struck from his family’s record, which I find very interesting.”

Yang tensed up. “That has nothing to do with me, or this, sir.”

“If you say so.” Bronner closed the binder that Yang had given him. “Have you learned anything from this, Lieutenant von Leigh?”

“You said that you weren’t intending to teach me anything.”

“One can learn on one’s own,” Bronner said. “I was given the impression that you were quite the autodidact, anyway.”

“The message you intended to send me was received loud and clear, sir,” Yang said.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Bronner said. He smiled. “Keep your nose clean and to the grindstone, Leigh, and we should have no problems whatsoever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The complete absence of Reuenthal has been hovering like a ghost over the past few chapters, hasn't it?
> 
> I love Mittermeyer but he's having a bad and sad time.
> 
> Bronner is An OC and a deeply weird and unpleasant man. This universe might slowly have to get filled with OCs because although there are like 9 mbillion canon characters, not all of them fit in the places that I need them to go. If you are deeply allergic to OCs in your fanfiction, then I'm sorry, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa etc etc etc
> 
> In This House We Love Themes
> 
> Lydia says the vibes in this whole section are completely off the walls. Agree? Disagree?
> 
> This is the "I watched the Spiral Labyrinth Gaiden so you don't have to" chapter.
> 
> Chapter title is from the Lorde song "A World Alone". People are talkin / people are talkin, indeed. Might even say that they're speaking in tongues :p
> 
> Thank you to Lydia for the beta read. More weird ocs @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven and @ bit.ly/arcadispark . I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter.


	4. Wives & Daughters

_ December 479 IC, Odin _

Although Yang had been working himself up into a state of high anxiety over the prospect of seeing the Mariendorfs, as soon as he arrived at their estate, he felt a lot better. He had spent so much time in this place, with its quiet pines and graceful, snow-covered architecture, that it almost felt like coming home. He had phoned the count the night before, to ask if he could come visit, to which the answer was an enthusiastic affirmative, so they knew he was coming. This meant that when the door opened to let him in, Yang was almost bowled over by Hilde leaping onto him. She didn’t seem to mind that Yang’s coat got her damp with the wind-blown snow that was crusted onto it.

“Hank!” she yelled, wrapping her arms around him. Yang felt that she had gotten taller in his absence, which made sense, though he didn’t think the difference would be so noticeable. She had cut her hair short around her ears, and she was dressed in the trousers and button-down shirt that she preferred. Her one concession to women’s fashion was the pair of tiny green earrings she wore. 

“You don’t have to squeeze all the life out of me, Fraulein Hilde,” Yang said.

She released him and stepped back to let him in the house. “Sorry,” she said, though she was smiling so brightly that he didn’t think she was sorry at all.

He smiled back. “I’m glad to see you, too,” he said.

“Dad said that you’d been back on Odin for almost a month and didn’t tell me,” Hilda said, grouchiness and gladness competing for space in her tone as Yang headed into the hallway and divested himself of coat and winter gear in the coat closet.

“It’s a bit of an embarrassing story,” Yang said. “I was worried that you might be ashamed of me.” He felt perfectly comfortable speaking of it to Hilde; it was the count he was slightly more worried about. “Or, at least, your father might be ashamed of me. I don’t like the thought of disappointing him.”

Hilde grabbed Yang’s arm. “What happened?”

Yang glanced around himself for a second. “Where is your father?”

“He was called to Neue Sanssouci unexpectedly,” Hilde said, as though she were reciting something. “He apologizes for his inhospitality, and should be back within two hours. And  _ I _ can entertain you until then.”

“More trouble at the Prime Minister’s office?” Yang asked. The count had a minor posting in the diplomatic offices, mainly involving resolving issues between outer colonies and the crown. He took the work very seriously, something that could not be said for the vast majority of nobles.

“He doesn’t tell me anything,” Hilde huffed. “Well, anyway, he’ll be back later. Do you want some tea?”

“I have never been happier to hear those words in my life,” Yang said, which caused Hilde to laugh. He followed her through the house to the little parlor that she preferred, where there were tea and little cakes already waiting. They sat down, Hilde playing the part of the gracious hostess. “I love most things about the boarding house that I’m staying in,” Yang said, “but my landladies only ever make coffee. It’s truly a nightmare.”

“You should come live here,” Hilde said matter-of-factly. “My dad likes it when you do stay.”

“I’m sure you would all get tired of me rather quickly,” Yang said. He took a sip of his tea.

Hilde shook her head. “Not true.” She nibbled on one of the cakes and stared at him. “Why are you back on Odin?”

“It’s just such a beautiful planet that I couldn’t stay away for long,” Yang said.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Shut the door,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you.”

Hilde heard the tone in his voice, and she took the duty seriously, closing both doors to the parlor so that they couldn’t be overheard by the family servants, if they happened to be passing by. Yang wondered if he really should be telling this eleven year old girl everything, but Hilde was… special. She was far more keenly intelligent and aware than most other people, and Yang felt confident that she would understand him. He didn’t know if he should feel guilty that he saw an opportunity here to shape her worldview. Yang was in a unique position, one where she trusted him absolutely, would be receptive to hearing whatever he told her, and she was young enough to take what he said to heart. Her father probably wouldn’t approve, though, and Yang couldn’t help but feel slightly bad about that.

“What happened?” Hilde asked, leaning forward in her chair with her elbows on her knees and a rapt expression in her eyes.

Yang took another sip of his tea before he began. “Do you know the Merkatz family?”

Hilde considered this for a second, tapping her fingers on her chin. “I think so. I think I met Baron Merkatz once, at a party.”

“I was serving as Rear Admiral Merkatz’s adjutant,” Yang said. “The rear admiral is Baron Johan Merkatz’s third brother.”

“Doesn’t inherit,” Hilde said.

“No, but he’s made a name for himself.”

She nodded. “I don’t think I’ve met him.”

“You wouldn’t have. He works hard,” Yang said. “I think he spends most of his time in space. But you might have met his daughter, Cora, at some point.” Yang scratched his head. “I don’t remember what her last name is. She’s married now.”

“Okay.”

“I guess it doesn’t really matter, I’m just trying to give you some context.” He fiddled with his teacup for a second. “I like Rear Admiral Merkatz, don’t get me wrong.”

“But he sent you away,” she said. Her tone was questioning.

“Yes, he did,” Yang said.

“What did you do?”

“Do you listen to the news?” Hilde nodded, so Yang asked, “So, you heard about El Facil?”

“It was occupied,” she said. “Were you there?”

“Yes, I was. It was Merkatz’s fleet that fought the Alliance ships that were stationed there.”

“Wow,” Hilde said. “What was it like?”

Yang sighed and fiddled with his napkin. “I don’t want to tell you that it was exciting,” Yang said. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.”

“What impression?”

“War is an evil thing, Fraulein Hilde,” Yang said. “Thousands of people died there. I gave the orders that killed some of them. It’s not something that I can describe to you, and it’s not something that I want to describe to you.”

She leaned forward. “I can handle it. I’m grown.”

Yang had to smile at her earnest expression. “It’s not a matter of being grown or not,” he said. “And I can tell you all about the tactics and the ship movements and whatever you like, if you want to hear about them--”

“I do.”

He held up his hand a little. “Let me finish, Fraulein. I’m just saying that there’s a difference between that and telling you how it feels to give an order that you know will lead to someone dying. I couldn’t put it into words, but it’s an evil thing.” He took another sip of his tea.

It was weird to talk about this with anyone. Yang realized abruptly that, aside from the Mariendorfs and his landladies, every single person he knew was in the imperial fleet. It hadn’t really bothered him until this second, when he was faced with Hilde’s open and disarming face, and he realized that he probably didn’t have to warn her about how to cope with killing people, because it seemed like a situation that she would never need to be in. It was as though he lived in a universe where it was the norm to order people to kill and be killed. When had he entered that world? It had crept up on him gradually, so much so that he hadn’t realized-- or had forgotten-- that there was a world outside. He had to steady himself before he continued.

“I suppose you won’t ever have to learn that,” Yang said. “And I’m glad.”

Hilde nodded seriously. “Was that what made Rear Admiral Merkatz send you away?”

“No,” Yang said. “No, he understands all of that. I wouldn’t like him so much if he didn’t.”

“What happened, then?”

“During the fight, the flagship that I was on was hit, and Merkatz got a concussion. He turned over command of part of the fleet to me when we abandoned ship.” He paused for a second and looked around. “Do you have a piece of paper?”

“Sure.” Hilde got up and opened a drawer of a nearby bureau, pulling out a pad of paper and a pen. Yang took them and leaned over the coffee table to start scribbling a diagram, sketching out the positions of the two halves of Merkatz’s fleet during the fight, in vague relation to El Facil itself. “So this was the situation at the start of the battle.” He described the whole scenario with the A, B, C, and D groups, and Hilde listened, fascinated, as he scribbled out various diagrams showing the ships’ positions over time.

“So, eventually, C and D were here, going to land on the planet, and I was here with A and B. The escaping military ships were all over here, going as fast as they could. And then all of the merchant ships went out like this…” He continued to draw. Then he passed the pen and paper to Hilde. “Now, Fraulein, tell me what I should have done, in this situation.”

Hilde stared at it very seriously. “You should have the C and D groups chase the ships down over here.” She circled approximately half the space. “And you could capture these.”

“Let’s assume Commander Warrensburg wanted to continue landing on the planet,” Yang said. “He wanted to get there to make sure no one was setting traps on the planet’s surface or anything. So he didn’t have time to chase.”

“Okay…” Hilde drummed the pen on her lips. “You said that your group was good at positioning, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You should split up,” Hilde said. “Then you probably could capture most of the ships.”

“And which ships would you capture first?”

“Can you tell in space which ships are rebel fleet ships and which ones are merchant ships?”

“Yes, they look very different.”

She seemed concerned by something. “What if the merchant ships had been commandeered by the rebel fleet, to use as weapons?”

Yang looked at her curiously. “Why would you say that?”

“If I was on that planet,” Hilde said, “and I was desperate to get your fleet away, I would try to trick you. Oh-- maybe I would take empty merchant ships and pretend to use them as shields. You wouldn’t want to shoot at that, right? Then the fleet ships could escape.”

Yang winced. “They weren’t doing that, fraulein.”

“Okay. Or I suppose they could use empty merchant ships as rams, smash them into your ships. I read that sometimes if a ship is almost destroyed but can still steer, the captain will drive it into an enemy ship, to get the most use out of it.” Hilde was surprisingly astute and vicious. 

“I think if they were going to do that, they wouldn’t have flown off in all different directions.”

“You didn’t think it was a trick?”

“I think…” Yang tried to compose his thoughts. “Hilde, do you know what happens to civilians when the Empire captures their planet.”

“No,” she said. “What?”

“Most of the time, if they don’t resist, they’re taken to do hard labor on the frontier, for the rest of their lives. They’re taken away from their families, their home, everything.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip a little.

“So I think that the people on El Facil, they were all desperate. Desperate people don’t usually have time to think of tricks. They were all just trying to get out. You’re right, if they had done that kind of trick, they might have been able to beat us, and then gotten time for the main Alliance fleet to come and save them. But they didn’t do it.”

She nodded.

“So, if you were me, and you didn’t think it was a trick, what would you do?”

She looked at the paper again. “You should split up. Groups of three ships should be able to capture one pretty easily. You could probably get most of them, if you are fast.”

Yang nodded. “That’s right. I could have.”

She cocked her head at him. “So, what happened?”

“Do you think I’m a stupid man, Fraulein Hilde?”

“No!” she said emphatically. “Who said you were stupid?”

“No one,” Yang said. “I just want you to understand what happened.”

“What happened?”

“I ordered all of my ships to stay close together, and go capture all of the military ships first.”

“But--”

“Do you think I’m stupid, Fraulein Hilde?” Yang asked again.

“No…”

“Then why did I do that?” His voice was very gentle. “Tell me what I was thinking.”

She stared at him with wide eyes. “You didn’t catch all of them?”

“We caught the military ships,” Yang said.

“But the merchant ships?”

“All escaped.”

“You let them go on purpose?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?” she asked. Her voice was very quiet. “Wouldn’t you get in trouble?”

“Fraulein Hilde…” Yang said. “There were over a million people on those ships. Each one of those people has a life, like you and me. They have people they love, dreams, things that make them happy. Even if they weren’t going to be killed, I realized-- well, I knew-- I had a chance to do something good for them. I could let them go, and they would be able to live the life that everybody deserves to live.”

“But--” Hilde’s hands were on her legs, her fingernails digging into her pants.

“I knew that I might end up in trouble, real trouble, for it. But I’m just one person. Sometimes… Sometimes one person has to be ready to do the right thing, even if it costs them a high price.”

Hilde was completely silent. Yang looked down into his teacup for a second, then at the mass of scribbled on papers. “Do you understand, Fraulein?” he asked.

When Hilde didn’t respond, he looked back up at her. She was turned away from him and rubbing at her face with her sleeve. Yang reached out tentatively and put his hand on her shoulder. 

“But you could have died,” she said with a kind of weak sniffle. “My dad said--”

“I know,” Yang said. He squeezed her shoulder gently. “I know.”

“You can’t die. You’re my friend. You can’t.”

Yang shook his head a little. “Fraulein… I… Sometimes there are things that are more important than just my life.”

“But what about me?” she asked in a sad little voice. “Aren’t I important to you?”

Yang sighed. “Come here, Hilde,” he said, and scooted over a little on the couch so that there was room for her to sit next to him. She did, and he wrapped his arm around her, with her putting her head uncomfortably sideways on his chest, still sniffling a little. “If I had died, or if I had vanished, what would you have done?”

“I don’t know,” Hilde said.

“I think I do. Maybe it would have taken a couple years, but I think you would have found out a way to look up what happened at El Facil, and you would have seen what I did. I tried to make it look like a mistake, but I think you-- and a lot of other people-- are smart enough to see that it wasn’t a mistake. I think… you would understand what I did, and why I did it. I know it wouldn’t have been easy, and I’m sorry that I would have made you unhappy, because I care about you very, very deeply, Fraulein, but you would know why I had to do it.”

“Why are you telling me, then?”

“Because I might have to make another choice like this one, someday. And it might not work out as well as it did this time. I might die. And if I do, I would want you to know why.”

She clung to his shirt, and Yang patted her head for a second. “Don’t die,” she said.

“I will try not to,” he replied. “But it would be very presumptuous of me to make any promises.” He was trying to lighten the mood, but Hilde was still unhappy. Maybe he shouldn’t have had this conversation with her. Maybe she was too young to understand.

“What should I do, then?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” It was an odd question. “If I die?”

She shook her head, still nestled against him. “No-- I mean-- this is important. What should I do to help? Do you want me to do the same thing?”

“Hilde, no,” Yang said. “I hope that you’re never in a position where you have to make a choice like that. I don’t think you ever will be, just like I don’t think you’ll ever have to understand ordering soldiers into battle. I just… Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything to you. I just wanted you to understand me a little better. That’s all.”

“Oh.” Her voice was quiet now. “Okay.”

“There is one thing you can do for me,” Yang said.

“What?”

“Please don’t ever tell anyone about what I’ve said to you today,” he said. “Not even your father. It might be dangerous for all of us.”

“Okay,” she said. “I promise I won’t tell.”

“Thank you,” Yang said. He squeezed her shoulder again. “I trust you, Fraulein.”

“You can count on me, sir,” she said.

Yang laughed. “Don’t call me sir. I like it better when you call me Hank.”

Hilde laughed, too, some of the somber mood broken. “Okay, Hank.”

“Okay, Hilde.” He ruffled her hair and she squirmed away from him. “You should tell me about how school is going, so when your father gets back, we can pretend like that’s what we’ve been talking about this whole time.”

“Oh, yes!” She moved back to her own side of the table, and with slightly shaky hands poured both of them some more tea. “School is going perfectly this year,” she said.

* * *

The count came back not too much later, finding Yang and Hilde deep in a discussion that had started out about Hilde’s time at her girls’ school and eventually meandered back to Yang talking about the SW class at the IOA. He was demonstrating how the game worked with again a pen and a piece of paper, illustrating with the help of one of the count’s books how a specific battle might have been played out by two opponents in the game. Hilde was enraptured by the idea, and she wanted to play, but unfortunately there was no one for her to play against, so she had to be content with drawing out diagrams with Yang.

“You look like you’ve been busy plotting a war,” the count said as he came in, leaning on the door. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Yang said, standing up and smiling. “All of your work matters settled appropriately?”

“As far as they ever are,” Franz said. “If it’s not one thing, it’s the other. I should be lazy like all the other nobles and take an early retirement. Then I could be home to pester Hilde all day.”

“Dad!” she said, annoyed, as she scooped up all the loose papers she had been drawing on with Yang, folding them neatly and slipping them into her pocket. Yang had no doubt that she would study them intently for a while.

“Some would say that idle hands make the devil’s work,” Yang said, “but I see quite a lot of value in laziness.”

“Indeed. Has Hilde been the gracious hostess while I was away?”

“Of course,” Yang said. “We had an excellent time.”

“Then I’m sure she won’t mind if I steal you away from her for a while,” Franz said.

Hilde glanced between her father and Yang, a weird expression on her face. Yang shot her a reassuring smile, one that he didn’t think the count saw. “Of course not,” Yang said. “Lead the way, sir.”

The count brought him into his study. As Yang sat down in one of the armchairs, Franz unlocked a plain wooden cabinet and pulled out two glasses and a bottle. “Something to drink?”

“Sure, thank you,” Yang said. Franz poured two glasses of whiskey and handed one to Yang before sitting down himself.

“How have you been, Leigh?” Franz asked.

“I’ve been alright, sir,” he said. “In some ways glad to be back on Odin.”

“Yes.” Franz tilted his glass around in his hand. “I suppose I shan’t beat around the bush: I ran into Rear Admiral Merkatz at Neue Sanssouci the other week.”

“You did, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Is he well?”

“The scar on his forehead is quite something, but yes, he’s fine.”

“That’s good. I… Well, I suppose it’s stupid of me to say that I like him.”

“He didn’t tell me the exact nature of the disagreement that you apparently had.”

“It was a professional disagreement,” Yang said. “I briefly had command of part of his fleet, and I made a decision that was strategically unsound.”

“Unsound enough to have him remove you from your post when you had been there less than a year? After giving you command of his fleet as a sub-lieutenant?”

Yang looked away. “It was the kind of stupid decision that only a sub-lieutenant given far too much power under a stressful situation could make. It was an embarrassment to the fleet.”

“I see.” Franz took a sip of his drink. “Can you really be blamed for being an inexperienced commander tasked with something far above your station?”

“Merkatz knew I could do better, and he expected me to do better,” Yang said. “I was perfectly capable of making better decisions, but I made-- in his eyes-- the wrong ones.”

“You don’t sound very upset about this. You never struck me as a person who would be callous when their mistakes lead to the deaths of men under their command.”

“What?” Yang asked, looking up, confused. “Oh, nobody died. It wasn’t that kind of mistake. I didn’t lose any ships while I was in command.”

Franz squinted at him. “Then what exactly was the mistake that was so embarrassing that you had to be reassigned immediately?”

“Honestly, sir, I would prefer not to discuss it.”

“Really?”

“I tend to only end up embarrassing myself further.”

Franz looked at him strangely, then sighed. “I’ll respect your privacy, then, Leigh. I assume this was why you didn’t tell me you were back on Odin for so long?”

Yang blushed a little and looked away, mumbling, “I didn’t want to disappoint you, sir. You have been nothing but kind to me.”

“You’re not a disappointment,” the count said. “Please, don’t think that I would show you to the door over some kind of early career fumble. Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Yes,” Yang said, thinking about what he had said to Mittermeyer, “everyone does make honest mistakes.”

“Indeed.” There was a moment of silence. “Rear Admiral Merkatz also said some other interesting things to me.”

“Oh?”

“He expressed that he did think you are a very talented and promising young officer.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Yang said. “I do feel worst about disappointing him.”

“Yes. Well, he also told me that I should keep an eye on you, and make sure you were headed in the right direction.”

Yang winced a little. “Er, sorry that he foisted that burden upon you.”

“It’s not a burden. And I already feel myself somewhat responsible for you.”

“You don’t have to be, sir. I’ve already abused your generosity quite thoroughly.”

“Leigh, you were there for me-- for Hilde-- when Amelie died like no one else was. There’s no way that I can repay that in this lifetime, no matter how much I try. And even besides that, you are a brilliant young man, and I am proud to know you.”

Yang felt like his face must be beet red.

“It’s not abusing my generosity. I’m happy to give you anything that I can.”

“Er, thank you, sir.”

“But I am not quite sure what the rear admiral meant by his comment.”

Yang shook his head. “I don’t think that it’s actually anything you can fix, even if you tried,” Yang said. “I feel sometimes like I’m being swept along on tides greater than myself, and there’s not really a direction you can shepherd me in.”

“I see.”

“Please don’t worry about it, though, sir,” Yang said. “And if you see Rear Admiral Merkatz again, and he asks about me, you can tell him that he can trust that I am trying very hard to stay out of trouble.”

“You don’t strike me as a troublemaker, either.”

Yang shrugged. “It sometimes finds me, like it or not.”

“Do you think that you’ll be returning to the front lines?” Franz asked.

“Probably not for several years. I think I should try to make the most of my current posting. Merkatz wasn’t being cruel when he recommended it to me; I think it is a natural fit for my talents.”

“What exactly are you doing, now?”

“I’m in the Tactical Analysis/Personnel Intelligence unit,” Yang said. “Basically, what we do is we analyze past battles and any other information we can get our hands on, about the commanders in both our fleet and in the rebel fleet, and we try to determine what their specific strengths and weaknesses are, and what sort of tactics and strategies they favor. We don’t make battle plans  _ exactly _ ,” he said, “but we provide recommendations on what we think the enemy will do, and who and what will be best suited to counter them.”

“Sounds like fascinating work.”

“It is,” Yang said. “I am learning a lot.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I suppose when you do return to the front lines, you’ll have more of an eye for what the enemy will do than almost anyone else.”

Yang laughed a little. “Well, most of it is stuff that anyone could see if they looked carefully.”

“Most people are very bad at looking at things carefully.”

“That’s true.” Yang took a sip of his drink. “How have you been?” he asked, awkwardly trying to shift the conversation away from himself.

“I’ve been fine,” Franz said. “Life in the court is always interesting.”

“I can imagine.”

“Well, it’s filled with personalities. Hilde’s getting old enough that she’ll probably start having to be involved in that world soon enough. I can’t really say I’m looking forward to it.”

“Really? She’s only eleven.”

“One is a member of the nobility from birth, for better or for worse. And she’s my heir. That means quite a lot.” He fished around in his pocket. “She’s already being invited to things.” He passed Yang a thick cardstock invitation.

“What is this?”

“A winter solstice party that I have no desire to attend, but that Hilde will want to go to,” Franz said. “I suppose I should either decide to take her or decide to not tell her that the invitation was received.”

“Who is the Baroness Westpfale?” Yang asked, turning the card over in his hand.

“A funny young woman. A couple years younger than you are,” Franz said. “She was the sole heir of her father, who died several years ago, and now she and her mother amuse themselves with all sorts of projects. She attended the school where Amelie used to teach music, and now she endows it heavily, sponsors poor children to come to it, things of that nature.”

“And she invites you to parties?”

“Her mother invites me to parties,” Franz said. “I’m not sure what the reason for that is.”

“There’s an obvious one,” Yang said.

“A widow and a widower? I’m sure. But I’m not interested, and there would be no benefit in it for her, so I don’t think, well, who knows. Regardless, I appreciate her generosity in intervening in an old man’s impoverished social life.”

“Yet you don’t want to go to her party?”

“It will be filled to the brim with people thirty years younger than myself,” Franz said. “Hilde would probably have a good time. I know all the young women dote on her.”

“Will she be disappointed if she doesn’t go?”

“Yes. She likes to feel grown up, you know.”

Yang laughed. “I do know.”

Franz took another sip of his drink and studied Yang, then raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone,” he said. “If I might take advantage of your friendship.”

“Of course, sir,” Yang said. “Whatever you need.”

“Do you have any interest in parties?”

“Er,” Yang said. “Well, Reuenthal used to bring me to yours.”

“Remind me in a minute to ask you how Reuenthal is doing. But is that a yes?”

“I don’t have much practice with them,” Yang said. “I’m a terrible dancer.”

Franz laughed. “Would you mind terribly being Hilde’s escort? I think that a fine young lieutenant would be looked upon kindly as he makes sure that my daughter has a good time.”

“Oh, uh, sure,” Yang said. “I mean, as long as, you know, people don’t mind.”

“If you’re going to have as promising of a career as Rear Admiral Merkatz suggested, perhaps it will be a good thing for you to ingratiate yourself with the nobility who are around your age. You’ll probably be seeing them for quite some time.”

“Yes, of course, sir,” Yang said.

“And this should help reassure the rear admiral that I am doing my utmost to guide you in the correct direction.”

Yang winced a little. “Perhaps.”

“You don’t look enthusiastic.”

Yang looked around the room for a second. “Like I said, I’m bad at being social.”

“I’m sure you’ll survive. Besides, maybe you’ll meet someone there who interests you.”

Yang fiddled with his by now empty glass. “I was just thinking,” he said, “I really don’t know anyone aside from you and Hilde who aren’t in the fleet. Maybe it would be good to remind myself that there is a whole other world out there.”

“That’s the spirit,” Franz said. “And, you know, Hilde will be thrilled. She’ll feel very grown up that you’re escorting her.”

“I’ll wear my dress uniform,” Yang said. Franz laughed.

“So, how is Reuenthal doing? Have you heard from him recently?”

“Oh,” Yang rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t know. You know he’s the security officer on a far-patrol ship, right?”

“Yes, I do recall he said that in one of his rare letters.”

“He ends up deep in Alliance territory,” Yang said. “So he’s not really reachable most of the time.”

“It must be a stressful job, to be out on a single ship like that.”

“Yes,” Yang said. “I can imagine that it is.”

“Does he like the posting?”

“It’s difficult to get a confession out of him one way or another. He should be back on Odin, at least briefly, in a couple months. It’s easier to talk to him face to face.”

“You have a better way with him than I ever have.”

“He was the one who decided to be my friend,” Yang said. “I have no idea what he saw in me, honestly, but I’m very grateful to him.”

Franz laughed. “Leigh, you should be more aware of your own talents.”

“If you say so, sir.”

* * *

_ December 479 IC, Odin _

One of the Mariendorf family servants brought Hilde to Yang’s boarding house on the night of the party. His landladies were very amused by her, and they fetched Yang downstairs. He was still trying to wrangle his dress uniform into position as he came down the steps, and Hilde laughed at him. She looked very smart in her black suit and red bow tie.

“Good evening, Fraulein Hilde,” Yang said, giving her a theatrical bow, which she laughed at. “You look wonderful, as always.”

“Good evening, Lieutenant von Leigh.”

“Are you ready for me to be your escort this evening?”

“Of course!” He offered her his arm and she took it. They drove to the party, which was being held on the estate of the Baroness Westpfale. Yang couldn’t say he was thrilled to be going, but he decided that he was going to make the best of it, at least for Hilde’s sake. She seemed enthusiastic, mentioning how excited she was to talk to various people who would be there. Her planned topics of conversation sounded less like the typical social chatter that went on at these parties, and more like a series of pointed questions about everyone’s careers and educations.

“Why are you so curious about where everyone went to school?” Yang asked. “I’m not opposed to it, but it seems like odd dinner party talk.”

Hilde stared out the car window. “All the adults know what they’re doing,” she said. “My dad says I should pay attention to the way their lives are, so I can figure out how to make mine the way I want it to be.”

He looked at her curiously. “You can be anything you want to be, Hilde.”

She frowned a little, and he saw the expression in the window reflection. “Maybe.”

He wanted to ask more, but perhaps shouldn’t, with the driver in the car.

They arrived at the huge estate. Hilde hung onto Yang’s arm as they walked up the huge steps to the entrance and were let into the hall.

The place was dazzlingly decorated for the winter solstice, with candles and evergreen boughs decked with tinsel over every available surface. The hall was swarming with dancers, each couple dressed to the nines. They were greeted at the door by an older woman wearing a long green dress.

“Oh, Hildegarde, I’m so glad you could come,” she said. “It’s a shame you couldn’t convince Count Mariendorf to come as well, though.”

“I’m sorry, Frau Westpfale,” Hilde said. “He really wasn’t feeling up to it.”

“I shall have to invite you both over for a more subdued event in the future, then he won’t have any excuses.” She smiled, and Hilde giggled a little. “Who is your escort?”

“Frau Westpfale, this is a friend of my father’s, Lieutenant Hank von Leigh,” Hilde said.

“Charmed, ma’m,” Yang said, trying to be gracious. He decided that he should imitate what he had seen Reuenthal do, at this kind of party, and he gave a slight bow. His hair flopped back into his face, and he brushed it out of his eyes as he stood back up.

“And what is a dashing young lieutenant doing escorting the young miss Mariendorf?” Frau Westpfale asked.

“The count suggested that I ensure she have a good time,” Yang said. “And that I should take this opportunity to meet people my own age. Being in the fleet does not provide many chances for social mingling.”

This answer seemed to satisfy Frau Westpfale, because she relaxed and smiled. “Well, I am very glad you could come, then, Lieutenant. There are plenty of young ladies here who are always glad to have the chance to talk to successful young men.”

Yang smiled and rubbed the back of his head, not wanting to embarrass himself by arguing about her use of the word ‘successful’. “Thank you for having me,” he said.

“Ah, well, I shouldn’t trouble young people such as yourselves any more than necessary. Please, enjoy the party.”

“I will, thank you,” Yang said, and then Hilde dragged him into the room. 

“I want you to meet the baroness. She’s great.” Hilde said as she pulled him past the dancers. “Where is she?”

“Oh, er, sure.” Hilde pulled him all around the party, looking for the elusive hostess, but didn’t end up finding her. This frustrated Hilde, and Yang suggested that the baroness would probably reappear soon, and that Hilde should go and see who else was at the party. Hilde sighed, but did so, leaving Yang alone near the refreshments. He was putting some grapes on a plate when someone called out to him.

“Lieutenant von Leigh?” He turned, startled, almost dropping his plate. He didn’t recognize the voice of the woman who was speaking to him, but when he looked at her, he remembered after just a moment why she looked so familiar. She was a few years older than himself, with curly brown hair done up gracefully around a pretty face. She was wearing a blue gown that did not do very much to disguise the fact that she was pregnant.

Yang rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. “Hello, er, I’m sorry-- I know you’re Rear Admiral Merkatz’s daughter, but I’m not sure I remember your married name.”

She laughed at his confusion. “Feldmann, Cora von Feldmann.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you then, Frau Feldmann.” He wasn’t sure what to say to her. “I’m surprised to meet you here.”

“I am, as well,” Cora said. “But Odin is a smaller planet than everyone likes to believe, and the capital is a small place indeed.”

“That’s true. Do you know the Baroness?”

“She’s one of my husband’s cousins,” Cora said. “But I knew her socially before we were married.”

“I see,” Yang said. “I feel rather like I’m crashing this party, since I have not had the pleasure of making her acquaintance.”

“She’s a charming young thing.” Cora looked him over. “Be careful around her.”

Yang had to raise an eyebrow at that. “Usually that warning is given in the other direction.”

“You’ll see what I mean, if you do speak to her. She-- well, you’ll see.”

“Thank you for the heads up, then,” Yang said. He decided to switch topics. “Is your father well?”

“Yes, he is,” Cora said. “I didn’t expect to meet you here, but I don’t think there’s anyone else in the capital who matches your description, so I had to say hello when I had the chance.”

Yang laughed a little, feeling very awkward. “Yes, I think you might be right about that. It surprises me that your father gave you such a detailed description that you were able to recognize me at a party, though.”

“He spoke very highly of you in his letters,” Cora said. The use of the past tense, and the fact that Cora had definitely seen her father in person since then both tipped Yang off to the fact that she knew he was in disgrace.

“I’m aware that the reason for my reassignment was something of a disappointment to him,” Yang said. “Did he tell you about that?”

“He avoids speaking about his work too much, but I was able to put the pieces together.”

“I see,” Yang said. “Are you speaking to me out of a desire to witness a car crash, then?” He smiled as he said it, indicating that it was a joke.

Cora tilted her head slightly to the side. “No. I am curious about you, but I don’t think that we need to go so far as to say that you’re an unmitigated disaster.”

“A mitigated one, then.”

She smiled. “Yes, it seems as though everyone around you is doing their best to mitigate you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Introducing you to society is rather like putting a fancy little gold chain on you, is it not?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“People behave far better when they have wives, Lieutenant. And I suppose you’re here to find one.”

“Oh, er…” Yang was suddenly very awkward. “I suppose.”

“You sound unsure of that?”

“I don’t think that most people here would be interested,” he said. “I do look the part of the outsider. It’s a little hard to imagine that any respectable woman would want to tie herself to me.”

“You’d be surprised, Lieutenant. There are plenty of younger daughters from minor families for whom a marriage to a promising young officer would be mutually convenient. There is a shortage of young men who have the right qualities.”

“And what qualities are those?”

“Having a beating heart and a working pair of lungs, for one thing,” Cora said dryly. “But aside from that, a good career is a bonus, a sharp mind.” She studied him for a second. “My father described you as being too kind hearted for your own safety. There are many women who understand that to be an attractive quality.”

Yang scratched his head. “I’m not sure that’s what your father meant by that.”

“There are some soldiers who treat their wives about as nicely as they treat the enemy.” She smiled a thin smile. “Even if that were the case for you, I think your future wife would not have much to worry about.”

“Hard to tell if that is an insult disguised as a compliment, or the other way around,” Yang said with a frown.

“It’s a statement of fact, Lieutenant. Regardless, there are plenty of women here who would be a suitable match for you. I would be happy to make the introductions. My father and, although I can’t presume to speak for him, I’m sure Count Mariendorf would both vouch for your character and potential.”

“I’m here as an escort for the young lady Mariendorf tonight,” Yang said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t socialize so much for my own sake. I’m not very good at it.”

“You seem to be doing fine to me.”

“Frau Feldmann, you are a married woman, and the daughter of a man I respect highly. The expectations for conversation with you are quite different than they would be with someone else.”

She laughed at that. “You are capable of being a gentleman. That’s all it takes.”

“I’m sure,” Yang said, though he wasn’t sure at all.

“It’s not as though you can go without a wife for forever,” Cora said. “You should start looking as soon as you’re able.”

“There have been plenty of bachelors who contributed great things to society.”

“And all of them had nasty rumors follow them,” Cora said. “I don’t think a man in your position needs or wants any more talk attached to his name.”

“That may be true, but it also feels rather cold to look for a wife just for the purposes of stopping talk.” He glanced at her, then decided the question he had wanted to ask was definitely too impolite.

She seemed to understand, regardless. “Love is a tricky and delicate thing, Lieutenant. I would say not to discount the idea that a wife would provide a measure of security for you.” She touched her own lip, a weird, thoughtful gesture. “Women have understood that for a long time.”

“And is that fair?” Yang asked.

“Do we live in a fair world, Lieutenant?”

“I would like to.”

“Perhaps I should tell my father that you’re more dangerous than he thinks.”

“Please, don’t,” Yang said, blanching.

She laughed. “I’m joking, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You are a strange man, indeed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize. It just means that you have to be careful.”

“It seems that I’m not the most adept at that.”

“Practice makes perfect, Lieutenant. I’m sure you will learn quickly, now that you’re going to be on Odin for a while. I’m led to believe that the capital is different in every way from life on board a ship.”

“Well, different, sure. But people are the same.”

She laughed. “As you say.”

“I apologize in advance if I’m overstepping,” Yang said. Cora looked at him oddly. “But my new commanding officer, Commodore Bronner, told me to tell you hello if I should see you. I am sure that if I failed to tell you that, he would find out that I had neglected my duties to him, and he would take offense.”

She sighed, then smiled slightly. “No, you’re not overstepping. Deitrich is a… good friend of mine.”

It was unclear if she knew that Yang knew that the two had been engaged. He decided not to bring it up. “I’m glad I’m not being impolite, then.”

“Of course not,” she smiled at him. “You may tell him that I also say hello, and that I’m doing well.”

“I will do that,” Yang said.

“Do you like the commodore?”

“He doesn’t like me.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” Cora said. “But that doesn’t answer the question.”

“I haven’t known him long enough to form a fair opinion of him.”

“I’m sorry for being curious, but what is your unfair opinion of him?”

Yang was trapped, so he scrambled around for a polite answer. “He takes his perceived duty towards me very seriously, which it makes it very difficult for us to be friends or equals,” Yang said. “Although I was far junior in rank to your father, I think we had a rapport and a trust, for a time. The same could not be said for Commodore Bronner and me.”

Cora smiled. “He’s not as unpleasant as everyone thinks he is, you know.”

“I’m sure he is a wonderful person when not playing his official role.”

“No, he can be charming when he’s playing some other part.” She shook her head a little. “If he causes you too much of a headache, I can tell him to stop.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” She touched Yang’s arm, a friendly gesture. “I shouldn’t bother you so much about serious topics when you’re here to have fun.”

“Oh, I’m not bothered.”

“Indeed. I’m sure I’ll see you again, Lieutenant.”

“I look forward to it, Frau Feldmann.”

She smiled and nodded at him, flitting away to rejoin the rest of the guests, leaving Yang rather alone at the refreshments table once again. He could see Hilde across the room, talking with her hands on her hips to a gaggle of young men, who appeared to be laughing. She seemed animated rather than in any trouble, though, so he left her alone. His gaze traveled the room, looking around at all the gaudy couples talking and dancing. It was lonely, to stand on the edge of the party, but even though he had just been exhorted to make the most of the night and find other people to talk to, Yang didn’t quite have the wherewithal to do so. Cora had told him that he should look for younger daughters of minor families, but he had no idea who anyone was. Maybe he should have taken her up on her offer to make introductions. Maybe he should have Hilde introduce him to someone. The thought made him smile a little.

While he was standing there amusing himself, someone else came up right beside him. “I see that Cora is done bothering you,” she said. “I was told in no uncertain terms to make your acquaintance.”

This new woman was dressed in a rather low cut red gown. She was about seventeen or eighteen, with black hair and long eyelashes. Her face was pretty, but sharp and mischievous. She held a fan in her right hand, which she opened in front of her face as she spoke.

“Er, hello,” Yang said. “I’m afraid I don’t know your name, Fraulein…”

“Magdalena,” she said. “And you are Hank.”

“From that introduction, I assume it was Fraulein Mariendorf who demanded that you speak to me?”

“Of course.” Magdalena smiled at him coyly. “She told me that I was expected to dance with you, and who am I to refuse such a command?”

“Oh, er… Fraulein Mariendorf should know better than to inflict my dancing on anybody else.”

Magdalena grabbed his arm, a gesture he did not expect, and pulled him forward, away from the refreshments table. “Don’t worry,” Magdalena said. “I’ll make sure you don’t step on my toes, and, if you do, I’ll make sure you make it up to me.”

Yang didn’t have a chance to respond before they had made it to the center of the dance floor, where Magdalena practically threw herself upon him. Yang was too busy keeping track of where all of their limbs were to speak. The first song that they danced to was a rather fast thing, which meant that there were too many steps, and Yang was bad at all of them. Magdalena was true to her word about not letting him step on her toes. In fact, she took the lead in the dance, almost pushing him around. He didn’t exactly mind, as long as she didn’t push him directly into one of the other spinning couples. 

As the song ended, Yang expected that he would be let go of, but she winked at him and held his arms so that he couldn’t gracefully escape. He looked around the room to see where Hilde was. She was watching him from the sidelines, with a somewhat pleased expression on her face. Hilde wasn’t the only person watching them, though. Yang caught Cora’s eye from across the room, and she mostly looked resigned. When their eyes met, she shook her head a tiny bit and shrugged.

This next song was slower, so Yang was able to catch his breath and talk. “Is there a reason why Frau Feldmann seems disappointed that you’re dancing with me?” Yang asked.

“Perhaps she just wanted you all to herself,” Magdalena said with a smile that made it clear that this was not the real reason. “You are quite handsome.”

“Er, thank you, but Frau Feldmann is a married woman.”

“That has never once stopped anyone,” Magdalena said. 

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

She laughed. “How innocent you are.” She leaned forward onto him. “I like that.”

Yang really had no response to that whatsoever, so he stayed silent and let her walk him through the next several dance steps.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m really not very good at being social. I’m warning you now because I don’t want to disappoint you with awkward silences when I have no idea what to say.”

“Oh, I’m not disappointed at all,” she said. “Sometimes it’s good to talk to someone who’s not up to their neck in court talk anyway. And you aren’t so bad at dancing.”

“You’re doing all the work.”

“It takes two to tango, Hank von Leigh.”

Again, he was left without a response. His confusion amused her, he could tell, so he didn’t feel too bad.

“Where are you from?” she asked after a second, twirling herself underneath his arm before he could answer.

“Phezzan-land,” he said.

“My father took me there, once. Very interesting place.”

“That is certainly something that you could say about it.”

She laughed. “Do you not like your own homeland, Hank?”

“It didn’t treat me particularly kindly, which is why I ended up back in the fatherland.”

“And is the fatherland treating you kindly?”

“Some people have,” Yang said.

“Am I included in that list?”

“Would you like to be?”

“Oh, yes, I would indeed.” She smiled up at him. He was very uncomfortable with… whatever this was, but not enough to try to find a way to leave the situation. When they turned around again, he saw that Hilde was still looking on with an approving glance, so this situation probably wasn’t very dangerous. Maybe he was making a mistake entrusting all of his social awareness to an eleven year old, but he didn’t have much of a choice.

“Then yes, you are treating me kindly,” Yang said.

“I’m so glad to hear that you think so, since it means that we can continue dancing.”

Yang didn’t understand how she kept him trapped. “Is there any particular reason you’re interested in dancing with me?”

“Am I not allowed to like a man in uniform?” She smiled at him some more, and then deliberately moved so that Yang’s foot ended up crashing down on her toe. “Ouch,” she said, very flatly.

“I’m sorry,” Yang said, immediately trying to pull back.

“My fault,” she said with a grin, “but you did say that you would make it up to me.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Yang said. He knew that she was about to do something, but he had no idea what it was until Magdalena leaned very close to him, and her hand slid down his back until it was firmly placed on his butt. Yang’s entire face was beet red, but he didn’t want to cause a scene at this party. “What are you doing?” he hissed.

“Let me have my fun,” she said, but her hand traveled back up to a safer position. “Don’t you want to have a good time?”

“I don’t need any more attention on me,” Yang said. “And everyone could have seen that. Hilde could have seen it!”

“You’re trying to protect the little Mariendorf’s modesty? I commend you,” Magdalena said with a laugh. “But maybe it wouldn’t hurt her to learn more about the way that men and women behave.”

“Leave her alone.”

“I’m not trying to disparage her,” Magdalena said. “I love her. We’re quite bosom friends, you know.”

“If you say so.”

“It amazes me that her father is so indulgent,” she continued, spinning around with a particular upswell of the music.

“What are you talking about?”

“Her mother would have never let her come to a party like this dressed like a boy.”

“I think she looks sweet,” Yang said.

“It’s not a matter of how she looks, of course. It’s a matter of what people see.”

“And what are people seeing?”

“A girl who does not know that she is one,” Magdalena said. “It’s a difficult thing to be.”

“I won’t keep dancing with you if you keep speaking about her with that tone,” Yang said. “I’m her escort, and I won’t let--”

“Oh, the righteous anger! I love it.” Magdalena smiled. “But I won’t be mean to Hilde, if you like. I’m just trying to warn you that she will have a difficult time.”

“That’s her business, and not yours.”

“It might be my business, you never know,” she said. “I know more things than you might realize, Hank.”

“I’m sure.” He fell silent, frowning a little as they danced. The music changed again, to something a little more upbeat but not quite energetic.

“Have I offended you?” she asked, when he continued to frown and look around.

“I have no idea what you want from me,” Yang said. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“I’m a simple woman,” Magdalena said. “I want two things: to have a good time with a handsome and strange lieutenant, and I want people to see that I’m having a good time with him while I do it.”

“What if I don’t want to be seen?”

“It’s far too late for that, my friend.”

“I don’t think we’re friends.”

“Of course,” she said with that same smile and mischievous giggle. “But we could be something to each other, could we not?”

“And why do you want to be seen?”

“One hardly needs a reason to want to be seen. It’s one of the great joys in life, don’t you think?”

“I would have to disagree.”

“You should have stayed on Phezzan if you didn’t want to be seen, Hank.”

“Perhaps I should have.”

“But it’s too late, now.”

“Clearly.”

“Are you having a good time?” she asked.

“I would hate to lie to you,” he said flatly. She laughed at him.

“If you really don’t want to be seen, I can arrange that.”

“You mean you’d stop forcing me to dance with you?”

“Forcing?” She lifted her hands completely off of him. “Force has nothing to do with it.”

“Compelling, then.”

“So, you do find me compelling.” She smiled widely and put her hands back where they had been on his shoulder and hip, playing with her fan distractingly to the side of his face.

“I--” And then in that moment of distraction, Yang accidentally stepped on her toe again.

“Ouch.” She winked at him. “You’ll have to make that up to me, Hank.”

Before he could say anything, she was pulling him off the dance floor, towards the back of the hall. He didn’t see Hilde anymore, but he caught a glimpse of Frau Westpfale, who seemed angry at him. The speed at which Magdalena was dragging him across the room left him absolutely no chance to process that angry expression, though. She opened a door and pulled him through, into a dark and empty hallway that was a sharp contrast to the loud and brightly lit hall.

“Come on,” she said.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked. “I should really stay in there with Hilde.”

“She’ll be fine,” Magdalena said. “Come on.”

“Where-- how do you even know where you’re going?” he asked as she led him through several twists of the hallway and through a couple doors.

“This is my house, stupid,” she said.

Yang almost fell over as she pushed him through another set of doors, this time into what was probably their destination, a library of some sort. She lit one lamp on the wall, casting the place into a warm, dim light.

“You’re the baroness?”

“Of course,” she said. “Very silly of you to go to a party and not even know the hostess’s name.”

“Frau Feldmann told me that I should be careful of you.”

“Frau Feldmann doesn’t know how to mind her own business.”

“I thought you wanted to be seen.”

“By my mother, not by the nosy wife of my cousin,” she said dismissively. “Now, stop talking.”

“Why?”

“Because we have about five minutes before my mother comes in here and yells at me, and I want to make the most of those five minutes, alright?”

She came right up to him. “Er.”

Her hands were on his chest, and she pushed him back until he fell into an armchair, trying to scramble for balance. She leaned in very close to his face.

“Are you going to kiss me?” she asked. “Come on, at least make this a little fun.”

“It seems like that’s where this is going,” Yang said. “You’re right on top of me.”

“Oh, well, if you’re not going to do it,” she said, and then tilted her head and pressed her mouth to his.

Yang had never kissed anyone before, and it wasn’t… as unpleasant as it could have been. The whole experience had begun so oddly that he didn’t really have time to think about if he wanted it or not. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. He might have enjoyed it if he had known Magdalena at all, but he was mostly stuck thinking about the fact that he had accidentally abandoned Hilde at the party. The thought wasn’t enough to try to get her off of him, but it was enough to make him feel quite antsy.

Eventually, she broke it off. “You kiss okay, but your hands are like dead little fish,” she said, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, and then her hand on her dress. “You’re supposed to touch me, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Yang said. “Sorry?”

“Well, whatever,” she said. She stood up and paced a little. “I guess you made it up to me.”

“Er-- weren’t you trying to get caught by your mother?”

“I guess. But now I feel guilty.”

“Sorry?” Yang said again. He was flustered and confused.

“It probably won’t do  _ you _ any good to get in trouble with my mother. Then she won’t let me invite you to things in the future.”

“Er.”

“Come on,” she said. “I guess we should go back.” She offered him her hand to stand him up out of the chair, and he hesitated before taking it. She was surprisingly strong as she hoisted him to his feet.

* * *

Hilde seemed distracted on the car ride back to her house. She had her head pressed to the window, and she was watching the snow covered streets appear and vanish in the cones of light cast by the streetlamps, her fingers twisting and pulling at her bow tie. Yang noticed this agitation, and asked, “Did you enjoy the party, Fraulein Hilde?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, but it was a non-committal half agreement.

“Is something the matter?” Yang asked.

“Where did you go, when you left with the baroness?” Hilde asked.

“She wanted to show me her library,” Yang lied. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Did something happen while I was gone? We were only out for a couple minutes.”

“No,” Hilde said. “She just--”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Hilde repeated. She seemed frustrated now, though Yang didn’t know why.

“Did she say something to you?”

“No.”

“Do you not want me to talk to her?” Yang asked.

“I wanted you to be friends with her, because she’s… my friend,” Hilde said. “I don’t know.”

Yang reached over to her and patted her shoulder. “That’s alright, that’s fine.”

She shook her head a little. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

“The baroness is a very beautiful young woman, yes,” Yang said.

“Yeah.” Hilde squinted out the window and fell silent. 

“Are you just mad that she monopolized my dancing time, so I didn’t dance with you?”

“I hate dancing,” Hilde muttered. “And so do you.”

Yang laughed. “Yes, you’re completely right about that.”

He had no idea what was causing Hilde’s weird mood, but he decided there wasn’t any point in pressing her on it, because she didn’t seem to be able to articulate the problem herself, so Yang fell silent as well, and they spent the rest of the trip in their own contemplative silences.

The whole evening had been strange, and he had no idea what to think about it. He should stop accepting invitations to these society parties, he thought, because they always made him feel very strange. He had no idea if it would have been better or worse for Reuenthal to be there. He sighed and shook his head slightly, causing Hilde to look over at him. What would Reuenthal think of all of this? Yang had no idea.

Snow was falling heavily by time Yang made it back to his boarding house room. He lit a fire in the hearth and stared into it for a while, thinking. He wanted to write to Reuenthal, but realized that he had nothing to say. It was just another one of those things that was being stacked into the “talk about it in person” pile. That pile was getting so large that Yang was almost dreading Reuenthal’s eventual return to Odin.

The fire crackled in the hearth, and Yang fell asleep in his chair, feeling both that nothing had been resolved, and that his strange problems were impossible to articulate in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> telling your only other friend, who is eleven, to do thought crimes (or real crimes). good idea.
> 
> Taking a break from space battles to go write a regency romance, or whatever tf this is
> 
> we know that Merkatz has a daughter in canon b/c it was threats against her that caused him to back the nobles during the civil war. afaik though she never actually appears on screen or has a name. anyway, mine now. trying desperately to get more women into the empire. it's weird and silly that there are relatively few women characters b/c you'd think that a society in which all of the men go get shot at in space battles that regularly kill millions of people at a time, there'd be like, a terrible society gender ratio? maybe they also selectively favor having boy children in the first place to balance it out? anyway
> 
> what is there to be said about magdalena von westpfalen? a lot lmao. she knows more things than you might realize [insert eyes emoji here]
> 
> "This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender," i holler as i overturn [the baroness von westpfalen's] barbecue grill and turn the [winter solstice] into the [solstice] of Shit
> 
> this chapter was probably not drama enough lol. don't worry I'll be back soon with other drama
> 
> anyway. thank you to lydia for the beta read. I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter. there's more science fiction @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven and less science fiction @ bit.ly/arcadispark


	5. Amuse-Bouche

_ February 480 IC, Odin _

Yang sat at his desk in the TA/PI unit offices, his feet up on his desk and his eyes closed, with his arms folded loosely behind his head. He had a huge amount of research open on his computer, but he wasn’t looking at it. He had already gone over it several times, and now was just thinking it over. Unfortunately for Yang, thinking looked a lot like sleeping to his boss.

Bronner came up to Yang’s desk and pulled Yang’s chair backwards abruptly enough that Yang’s legs fell off his desk and he flailed his arms, startled.

“Are you being paid to work, or are you being paid to sleep, Leigh?” Bronner asked.

“I’m working, sir,” Yang said, turning around in his chair.

“That’s not any kind of work that I’ve ever seen. Do you care to explain it?”

“I was thinking.”

“Sure.”

“Do you not believe that I am capable of thinking?”

“I believe that you are capable of sleeping on the job, and now you are being smart with me, Leigh. I don’t love it.”

“My apologies, sir,” Yang said. “Are you going to ask what I was thinking about?”

“Honestly, I shudder to know,” Bronner said flatly. “What were you thinking about, Leigh?”

“Iserlohn fortress.”

“So is everyone else. You’re not special.”

“I’ve been putting together some prospective scenarios,” Yang said. He leaned forward and pulled up what he had been working on on his computer. “This is most of the rebel fleet admiralty who I believe would be capable of leading an assault on Iserlohn. And this--” he clicked around to a different page-- “is a description of the tactics that I think that they would each use.”

“Thrilling.”

“I know that’s not infallible, but then I used the analysis you put together on Kleist and Wartenburg to predict which strategies would be winning ones.”

“And what conclusion did you come to?”

“There are many ways to take Iserlohn fortress,” Yang said with a shrug. “Overconfidence in it will lead to blind panic when it feels like it’s actually under threat, which will lead to a loss.”

“That sure is a story, Leigh. I actually came over here to ask you about what you were supposed to be working on, which is the analysis of Vice Admiral Kysserling’s last engagement.”

Yang sighed, leaned down, opened his desk drawer, and pulled out the binder he had prepared a while ago. “Here.”

“So you’ve been amusing yourself thinking about Iserlohn?”

“Is it better for me to sleep, or to amuse myself?” Yang asked.

Bronner shook his head. “What makes you think your analysis is so worthwhile?”

“I don’t claim to have any special thoughts about it, but it’s odd to me that we don’t spend more time preparing--”

“People are touchy about their precious fortress, Leigh. They’re not going to want to hear how one lieutenant working in the basement thinks that the whole thing can be brought down.”

Yang leaned back and closed his eyes again. “Well, fine. It’s not my problem.”

“What are these scenarios that you’re thinking about so strongly?” Bronner asked, leaning forward. “And how did you come up with them?”

“The same way we come up with any other analysis,” Yang said. “And then I just used that to sort of, you know, play out a game like we would in SW class at the IOA.”

“Against yourself?”

“I tried to make sure that I was being fair,” Yang said. “But really, the game is just a formalized way to step through decisions in a sequence.”

Bronner looked at him for a second. “You like playing games, Leigh?”

“Sir, you have seen every game I’ve played. If I said ‘no’, you wouldn’t believe me for a second.”

“I might.” He pushed his glasses up on his face. “I do recall that you were better at pretending to be your classmates than you had any right to be.”

“I do have a lot of practice at that kind of thinking.”

“You’re lucky that that’s the case. It makes me more likely to take whatever you have to say seriously.”

“Oh, thank you, sir.”

“But not quite yet. How about we play through your game?”

“Can’t you just trust what I have to say?”

“What’s that old adage? Trust but verify.”

Yang sighed. “Fine. You know I’m free whenever. Set up a time, and we can play.”

“I was thinking now.”

“Now, sir?”

“You shouldn’t need any extra time to prepare.”

Yang rubbed his eyes. Truthfully, he had been on the verge of sleeping when Bronner came over. “If you insist.” He stood and stretched. “Who will you get to GM?”

“Kent.”

“Fine.”

“And you can play your favorite attack scenario, and I’ll be Iserlohn.”

“Sir, you’ll need another player on your team.”

“What?”

“One person has to play the fortress, and one person has to play the stationed fleet.”

Bronner looked at him sideways as they walked down the hallway towards one of the conference rooms. “And why is that the case?”

“For realism, sir,” Yang lied. “One actor cannot play two roles.”

“That’s not true,” Bronner pointed out. “There have been a great many plays where-- well, nevermind. Gothe can play the fleet, and I’ll play the fortress.”

“Sounds good, sir,” Yang said. Bronner looked at him suspiciously.

“I have no idea why you’re thinking so hard about how the rebels might take Iserlohn.”

Yang scratched his head. “They keep trying to take it, so they must want it.”

“It’s below you to state the obvious.”

“I just don’t like what they want it for, sir. Iserlohn’s value is in its use as both a defensive wall and as a bridgehead to attack. If they simply wanted their own wall, they would build their own fortress at the mouth of the corridor.”

“You think that they could do such a thing? The rebels seem to be allergic to the cost of fortress building, especially if they had to be under siege while constructing it.”

“They could, if they were truly committed to defense. And they’d put one at the mouth of the Phezzan corridor, too, while they were at it.”

“Their lack of defensive fortresses doesn’t necessarily speak to them not being committed to defense, it speaks to their politicians being unable to rule properly and think of anything beyond their next election cycle,” Bronner said, rather dismissively. “And Phezzan would balk at having a fortress on their doorstep. There’s a reason we don’t have one there, either.”

Yang frowned. “You know what I think of that.”

“You seem awfully worried about invasions. The Empire hasn’t been invaded in decades.”

“An acquaintance of mine told me once that I should keep in mind that as a member of the fleet, I am a servant to all the billions of people in the Empire. It is those people who would suffer the most under an invasion by the rebel fleet,” Yang said. “Forgive me for having heightened concern for their well-being.”

“Who was this acquaintance?”

“Commander Oberstein, of Iserlohn.”

“I should thank him for his wisdom.”

“I don’t know if he would appreciate that,” Yang said. They arrived at the conference room.

“You set up. I’ll find Gothe and Kent.” Yang did that as Bronner left, though it took him less time to set up than it did for Bronner to find the other two members of his staff whom he had selected to play the game, leaving Yang alone to kick up his feet on the desk and close his eyes again. When the three arrived, there were some amused chuckles from Gothe and Kent as Bronner shoved Yang’s legs off the desk. “Stop getting my furniture dirty,” Bronner said.

“Is it lese-majeste to claim that furniture belonging to the imperial government belongs to you?” Yang asked, but sat up.

“Someday, Leigh, your mouth will get on my nerves enough for me to have you reassigned to some frontier outpost.”

“I look forward to it,” he said. 

Bronner handed Kent a binder, which he had presumably fetched from his office on the way back. “Leigh thinks he can single handedly take down Iserlohn fortress,” he said. “We can base our respective strengths on the fourth battle of Iserlohn. I doubt the rebels have the ability to mass more than their forces for that, nor the desire to work with less.” He sat down at one of the computers that Yang had set up. “What part did you say you were playing again?” he asked.

“Admiral Sidney Sithole,” Yang said, picturing his face in his mind: an older, brown-skinned man who wore a serious expression in every photograph that Yang had seen from him.

“Why him?” Bronner asked.

“I’ve looked through his past records,” Yang said, “and I believe he has a few favored tactics that would work especially well against Iserlohn. He’s also just been promoted to full admiral, and the rebel fleet seems to like testing their new admirals with large tasks fairly quickly.” He shrugged. “Plus I think that his record shows that he’s competent. I think he has a better chance than most of their other admirals right now.”

“All right,” Bronner said. “Shall we get started?”

After allowing the other two players to set up and get situated, they began.

Yang had eighty thousand ships at his disposal, which was far more than he thought he needed. Previous battles over Iserlohn had amounted to simply attempting to overwhelm the fortress and its fleet with sheer numbers, which was never going to be a tactic that worked, especially if they wanted to approach at faster-than-light speeds, and therefore had to cram themselves into the relatively tiny corridor entrance.

Yang began by splitting his force in half, leaving half of it as a reserve far behind the main battle. It might be good to have later, but he didn’t need it now. It was unfortunate that, due to the nature of this being a game, and Bronner knowing Yang’s strength before they started, he would realize that Yang had more ships and was keeping the rest of his force elsewhere for some reason, but if Bronner was as dedicated of an actor as Yang thought he was, he wouldn’t use that information to his advantage.

Yang brought the portion of the fleet that he was using right up to the outside of the range of the fortress’s main gun, the Thor Hammer. He spread out his ships in a wide, flat plane, to fill the entirety of the corridor’s space, and to maximize his own firing angles on the fortress. He began sending wave after wave of missiles towards the fortress. Although enough of them were shot down by Iserlohn’s weaker but more nimble floating gun turrets, enough got through to begin to do some damage to the fortress itself. The liquid metal layer of the fortress’s outer shell moved in waves with each impact, and Yang described to the GM how he was attempting to alternate missile strikes on each side of the fortress to make those waves constructively interfere with each other. The GM allowed it, which meant that the floating gun turrets became less and less effective as time went on, being swept up and down with the waves in the liquid metal layer.

Bronner must have known that Yang was attempting to bait him into allowing the stationed fleet to launch. The fleet, Yang saw, was a weak point. Both sides wanted to bait the other-- Bronner into having Yang move within the range of the powerful main gun, Yang into having the fleet come out. Bronner was the one who gave in first, or perhaps it was the other player, Gothe, who was actually in charge of the fleet, who decided to launch.

The Iserlohn stationed fleet charged out towards Yang’s fleet. Yang immediately began moving inwards towards the fortress, though he was always careful to keep the imperial fleet in between his ships and the fortress itself, pressing them backwards while continuing to attack the fortress with long range missiles. It was a delicate dance, and through occasional glances backwards across the room, Yang could tell that both of the other side’s commanders were getting frustrated. Bronner was drumming his fingers on the table, as he was unable to give any commands that would stop the attack on his fortress. The other player, Gothe, was sweating and cringing, occasionally glancing at Bronner, trying to judge if the commodore would be unhappy with him.

Since the Iserlohn stationed fleet was even less than half of the portion of Yang’s fleet that he had sent out, Yang was able to press them backwards easily, closer and closer to the fortress. He intentionally moved so that they weren’t just immediately wiped out-- he needed to keep them alive, because it was their presence in between the fortress and his fleet that prevented the Thor Hammer from firing.

Across the room, Bronner said aloud, “Sorry about this, Gothe.” Yang knew what was coming, then, and he winced internally.

Bronner went ahead and fired the Thor Hammer, obliterating his own fleet and a large part of Yang’s. Gothe swore aloud, then folded his arms and glared at Bronner. 

“You’re out of the game,” Bronner said. “Feel free to exit stage left.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” Gothe said.

Bronner shrugged. “One does what one must.”

While Bronner and Gothe were having their argument, Yang was busy calling in his reinforcements, the other half of his fleet that had been safely hidden far outside the Thor Hammer’s range. Those ships, fresh and unharmed, resumed their missile attack at the fortress while his ships remaining inside the Thor Hammer’s range split up, spreading out as far as they could in order to pick off the remaining stationed fleet ships (which, lacking a commander and feeling betrayed by the fortress itself, were totally disorganized).

Bronner could do little except continue to fire the Thor Hammer, until Yang’s missiles from outside the range eventually overwhelmed the liquid metal of the fortress completely, and began ripping huge chunks in its side. From there, it was only a matter of time before the fortress was inoperable, and Yang’s ships were able to swarm it.

“We don’t have to play out the rest of this,” Bronner said. Kent stood up to leave, and then Yang and Bronner were alone in the conference room. “I suppose you’ve proven your point, Leigh.”

“I didn’t really have a point,” Yang said. “You were the one who wanted to play.”

Bronner turned in his chair towards Yang. “When you were playing your game with your friends, why didn’t you ever do this strategy?”

“Invading through Phezzan is far less costly, mostly in terms of lives, but it makes a lot of sense in other ways, too. If the Alliance ever decided to annex Phezzan, they’d also solve their debt problem…” Yang shrugged. “Anyway, the only reason people like to attack Iserlohn is because it looks like the thing that needs to be attacked. It’s a nice, shiny distraction.”

“You say you were playing as Admiral Sithole?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you think that this would be his strategy?”

“When he was a rear admiral, he had a major success one time guarding the retreat of the main force at Chandra starzone, by mixing his ships in with ours to prevent them from massing an attack on the rest of the retreating fleet. He’s not afraid to get too close for comfort, and he seems like an expert at positioning.” Yang shrugged.

“So, this was really a plan that you think he would do, and not what you personally would do, if you were trying to take Iserlohn.”

“For one thing, like I said, I wouldn’t try to take Iserlohn. But yes, I would do something completely different. I knew you would probably sacrifice your own fleet, but I wouldn’t want to risk that level of destruction,” Yang said.

“How did you know that I would sacrifice the fleet?” Bronner asked.

“Well… You weren’t in command of them. I believe if the fleet and the fortress were actually under the same commander, you would have been far more hesitant to make that call.”

“Interesting theory.”

“You don’t think so?”

“It depends on who the commanders are.”

“True. But I think having two commanders of equal rank there is a weakness that can be exploited. If there’s no real chain of command, decisions can get made that don’t benefit both groups equally. The fleet will think that they have the ability to run away, if they need to, and the fortress has the ability to destroy their own fleet to protect themselves, because they are, ultimately, more important. There’s a tension there.”

“I see. I’m curious now, Leigh, what would you do if you wanted to take Iserlohn?”

“Oh, I haven’t really thought about it,” Yang said.

Bronner looked at him with an expression that bordered on contempt. “Sure.”

“I don’t know,” Yang said, scratching his head. “I probably wouldn’t do anything that can be easily modeled by the game, so I don’t think it’s worth thinking out.”

“What?”

“I mean, tricks, sabotage, that sort of thing. Probably more effective than an outright assault. You can’t really play that through the game. Or maybe I’d send-- the Iserlohn corridor is only the required passage if you’re going faster than light-- so, maybe I could send sub-lightspeed ships out around the corridor and in from the back, in order to surround it. But at that point, I guess I could just go through into the Empire itself? I don’t know. Like I said, I haven’t put that much thought into it.”

“I’m glad you’re on our side, I suppose, Leigh.”

“Of course.”

“So, what are your takeaways from this?”

Yang leaned back in his chair. “You should suggest to high command that the stationed fleet and the fortress be unified under one commander. That’s the main takeaway. I don’t think there’s any way to pre-emptively deal with the other parts of the attack. Iserlohn is powerful, but anyone who says that it’s impenetrable is deluding themself.”

Bronner looked at him with a bit of an evil smile on his face. “You know what, Leigh, I think it is a good idea to present this idea to high command. You can come with me next time I talk to Fleet Admiral Muckenburger.”

Yang blanched a little. “Really?”

“You’ll just have to pretend to be a person who doesn’t run their mouth at every possible opportunity. I’d say it shouldn’t be hard for you, but that might be a lie.”

* * *

_ February 480 IC, Odin _

Neue Sanssouci looked about the same as Yang remembered from his few visits during his time at the IOA. The grounds were covered in the odd pile of mostly-melted snow, and the roads were slushy and disgusting. A chill layer of grey clouds hung over the sky, and the place seemed dour to the extreme. Commodore Bronner seemed relaxed next to him in the carriage, not minding that they were on their way to speak with the chief commander of the space fleet. Yang was tense in the seat next to him, opening and closing repeatedly the thick folder he was holding on his lap, as though compulsively checking that all the papers he had prepared were still there.

“Will you stop that?” Bronner asked after about the fifteenth time.

“Sorry, sir,” Yang said.

“Is there a particular reason you’re acting like a fourth grader afraid to go on stage in front of everybody’s parents?”

“Did you know that I almost died here once?” 

Bronner snorted. “No. What happened?”

Yang described the incident that had happened his freshman year. Bronner couldn’t contain the smirk on his face. “Well, I can’t say I blame them for trying,” Bronner said when Yang had finished.

“Thanks,” Yang said. “I’ll make a note that I should avoid going hunting with you, just in case.”

“You do that.”

“Is there a reason we’re meeting Muckenburger in Neue Sanssouci rather than at the Ministry?”

“It was more convenient for him,” Bronner said. “I do not exactly get to dictate our meeting times or places. He keeps an office here as well, though.”

They made it to the palace proper, and Bronner led them inside. He seemed familiar with the protocol and where to go, and Yang tried to remember the twisting path through the palace. The pace was huge, though, and all of the hallways started to look the same after a while. 

Eventually, they made it to Muckenburger’s office. There was a guard at the door, and Bronner announced who he was and what his business was. The guard confiscated their sidearms, then let them in. 

Muckenburger was sitting at his desk, drinking a cup of coffee. He looked up when Bronner and Yang entered, and for a moment a brief flicker of distaste crossed his face. Yang had no idea which one of them it was directed at, and he didn’t particularly want to find out. He quickly shuffled his folder into the other hand, then saluted as sharply as he could.

“Good morning, Commodore,” Muckenburger said.

“Good morning, Fleet Admiral,” Bronner said. “Thank you for clearing some time for us to speak.”

“Of course. I would hate to miss our little chats, when they provide such valuable insight.” Muckenburger didn’t sound very thrilled. Perhaps it was Bronner that he had found distasteful when they walked into the room. It was an odd feeling. “Well, have a seat.” He waved his hands at the chairs on the other side of his desk, and Bronner and Yang sat.

Bronner got right to business. “So, I wanted to go over first my personnel recommendations, if that’s all right with you.” Bronner said. Muckenburger gestured for him to go ahead quickly. Bronner had a long list of topics go over, ranging from which members of the Alliance fleet would likely be sent to lead the next engagements to which members of the imperial command would be better suited in different postings. Muckenburger listened to all of this, not quite patiently. He asked the occasional astute question, and Yang could see him mentally accepting or rejecting each one of Bronner’s suggestions. For his part, Bronner cut the theatrics and was direct and to the point, running through his list efficiently. Yang sat there and mostly listened, occasionally handing Bronner the required pieces of paper from their folder.

Unfortunately, though, when Bronner got to the end of his list, he said, “Now, that’s all I have, but Lieutenant von Leigh has brought up a very valuable suggestion that I think is worth listening to.”

Muckenburger turned his attention to Yang, who tried and failed not to tense. “Von Leigh…” Muckenburger said, looking at him with a more open expression of distaste now. Perhaps it had been Yang who had been the problem when they walked in the door. Perhaps it was both of them. “Aren’t you the one who caused such a problem at El Facil?”

The blood rushed out of Yang’s face. He stammered, “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Merkatz asked to bear the full responsibility for that disaster.” Muckenburger’s voice was odd-- somewhere between angry and contemplative. “He shouldn’t have.”

“I--” Yang said, then stopped. He didn’t know what to say.

“And now you’re here with some kind of suggestion.”

“Yes, sir,” Yang managed to get out. He wanted to say that he had no desire to be here, that it was Bronner’s idea, really, but he glanced over at Bronner, and saw the tiny smirk on his face, and shut up.

“Before you get to that, I would like to hear exactly what you were thinking at El Facil. I heard what Merkatz was thinking, to put someone so inexperienced in command, and I really did not understand it. So, tell me why exactly you failed to live up to Merkatz’s high expectations of you.”

“I was trying to ensure that I didn’t lose any of the men under my command, sir,” Yang said. “I thought it was safer to stay as a cohesive unit, rather than split up. I recognize that… sometimes you have to make choices that could lead to loss of life, but I thought the situation wasn’t urgent enough to call for it. So I ordered everyone to stay together, and to prioritize military targets.”

Muckenburger was drumming his fingers on his desk. There was a long moment in the office where that was the only sound. He stared at Yang so intensely that Yang thought he might take out his own sidearm and shoot him on the spot. But then Muckenburger just nodded once. “Well, what is it that you have to tell me, Lieutenant?”

“Oh, er.” Yang scrambled in the folder and to recreate his train of thought. “I believe the command structure at Iserlohn fortress needs to be clarified,” Yang said. He placed several documents on the desk and slid them towards Muckenburger, who picked them up and glanced through them. “I’ve prepared several different scenarios that I think are likely, or at least possible, where I believe the rebel fleet could take advantage of the, uh, tension that exists between the fortress commander and the commander of the fleet. They have equal rank but almost contradictory roles.”

Muckenburger looked at Bronner out of the corner of his eye. “And you agree with this assessment?”

“The scenarios that Leigh has invented are very plausible.”

Muckenburger took a long minute to read through the scenario on the top of the pile, which was the one that Yang and Bronner had played out. Yang was very tense through the whole thing, watching Muckenburger’s eyes flick back and forth quickly across the paper. When he turned the page, he slowly put the paper down.

“You really believe that the fortress commander might fire on his own fleet?”

“It’s not  _ his _ fleet,” Yang clarified. “That’s the problem.”

He realized he had spoken up a little too much when Bronner glanced sideways at him, clearly annoyed. Muckenburger saw that, and Yang noticed his eyes twitch slightly with amusement. Muckenburger might not like Yang, but he seemed to like the idea of someone bothering Bronner more.

“I see,” Muckenburger said. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

“But you won’t actually do anything about it,” Bronner said with a sigh. “Well, it was worth a try.”

Yang realized that he had been an unwitting pawn in what was clearly an ongoing fight between the commodore and the fleet admiral. Yang clenched his hands on the folder in his lap, knuckles white.

“I said I would consider it,” Muckenburger said. He glanced at Yang, who winced. “At the very least, you’ve given me several interesting scenarios to think about. You came up with these?”

“Yes, sir,” Yang said, not sure what Muckenburger’s angle was.

“Interesting,” Muckenburger said, and that was all he had to say. Yang hoped that he was not considering the string of contradictions inherent in the El Facil story too closely, but the way that Muckenburger studied him made him think that he probably was.

“That’s all I have for you, sir,” Bronner said after a second of this. Yang was grateful for his rescue, but not that grateful, since Bronner had clearly been setting him up for failure to begin with. “Did you have any particular questions, or points of action?”

“I’ll get back to you,” Muckenburger said, and stood. It was clearly a dismissal, so Bronner and Yang stood as well. Muckenburger headed to the door, the other two awkwardly trailing behind him. “I’m sure I’ll see you sooner, rather than later, Commodore.”

“I’m sure.”

“And you, Lieutenant,” Muckenburger said, turning to Yang. “I don’t want to see you for a long time. Or even hear your name. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Yang said.

“Excellent. I’m glad we understand each other.” Muckenburger pulled the door open. Yang and Bronner saluted, and he nodded and headed off down the hallway. They retrieved their sidearms from the guard without speaking.

When Yang and Bronner had made it far enough down an unoccupied corridor that Yang felt they weren’t likely to be overheard, Yang said, “You really are just trying to get me killed, aren’t you, sir?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Bronner said, but he was smiling.

“What were you trying to get out of having me present a plan to Muckenburger that he’s clearly already heard from you a hundred times?”

“I thought the hundred and first might change his mind, especially if it’s such an obvious thing as to come from the mouth of a disgraced lieutenant.”

“I should have known you would do something like this.”

“See, the difference between us, Leigh,” Bronner said, “is that I am a first class actor. You had no idea that whole time.”

Yang scowled at the ground.

“You, unfortunately, are a second class actor working from a fourth class script. Amateur work, but people keep you around out of the hopes that you’ll get better, or at least be entertaining when you finally get booed off stage.”

“Look, I’m trying, sir. The least you could do is not set me up to fail.”

“I don’t think I was setting you up to fail,” Bronner said. “I think that you actually came out of that looking rather good. Muckenburger will see that you have an eye for strategy, at the very least.”

“I would be better off if Muckeburger were not thinking about me at all,” Yang said. “I--”

Their conversation was interrupted when they heard the sound of running feet coming from around the corner. Both of them tensed up.

If Yang could have made a list of people he least wanted to see at that moment, the person running towards them would have definitely made the list. Magdalena von Westpfale turned the corner and then practically skidded to a stop in front of the two officers, moving far more nimbly in her dress than Yang would have thought possible.

“I thought I heard your voice, Hank von Leigh!” Magdalena said.

“Er, hi, Baroness Westpfale.”

Bronner glanced between the two of them, looking extremely amused. “Have we met?” he asked.

Magdalena glanced at him with a kind of disdain. “You were at Georg Feldmann’s wedding. So was I.”

“Oh, quite right,” Bronner said. “And how do you know my  _ favorite _ lieutenant?”

“He came to my winter solstice party with the young Fraulein Mariendorf,” Magdalena said. “He’s a wonderful dancer.”

Yang wanted Bronner to rescue him from this conversation, but Bronner was enjoying watching Yang be on the spot too much to save him. “Is he indeed?”

“Baroness Westpfale has a different and kinder memory of my dancing than I do,” Yang said. “I appreciate the sentiment, though.”

“Are you busy?” Magdalena asked.

“No, we just finished our business with Fleet Admiral Muckenburger,” Bronner said.

“Oh, excellent. Hank, would you like to join me for lunch?”

“I should get back to--”

“Oh, go ahead, Lieutenant,” Bronner said, an evil grin on his face. “You’ve earned a nice lunch out. And if the baroness is paying, that just means I don’t have to.”

“You are not invited,” Magdalena said dismissively.

Bronner laughed. “Ah, I see how it is.”

“No, you don’t,” Yang said. Magdalena put her hand on Yang’s arm.

“Thank you for loaning me your lieutenant, though,” Magdalena said to Bronner. “I’m sure I’ll get good use out of him.”

“Better than I, I’m sure,” Bronner said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Leigh.”

“Tomorrow?” Yang asked.

“Take the rest of the day off. Pleasure seeing you again, Baroness.” He gave a slight bow, then departed down the hallway. Yang watched him go, feeling that he would rather be back in Muckenburger’s office than with Magdalena.

“I was just heading to lunch with Susanna and Amarie and my mother,” Magdalena said. “Susanna is  _ such _ a good friend of mine. I’m sure they will both be glad for some other company.”

“Who?” Yang asked as Magdalena practically dragged him through the hallways. He had no choice but to follow her, since he didn’t know his way around Neue Sanssouci and had no desire to wander, lest he find himself wandering into something he didn’t want to be involved with.

“Susanna and I went to school together,” Magdalena said as she continued to lead Yang along. “Well, she was several years ahead of me, but we knew each other well.” There was an edge in Magdalena’s voice that made Yang think that while yes, the two women knew each other well, there was no love lost between them. “My mother likes that I keep in touch with my school friends.”

Yang looked sideways at her.

“And Amarie?”

“Hmph,” Magdalena said. “She’s fine, I guess.”

This probably meant that Magdalena had no actual harsh feelings towards her. Still, Yang had no idea who these people were.

“And what are you doing wandering around separated from this group of people?” Yang asked. “It seems like if you’re here to have lunch with your mother, you’d be staying with her.”

“You don’t need to have any concerns about that, Hank,” Magdalena said. “How is Hildegarde doing, by the way?”

“Oh, good,” Yang said.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Did you say something to upset her at your party? She was upset on the ride out.”

Magdalena raised her eyebrows at him. “Of course not. Why would I purposefully try to hurt the feelings of such a sweet little child?”

“Do you think she’s some kind of rival for my affection?” Yang asked.

Magdalena snorted. “I’m under no illusions about anyone’s affections. And I hope you’re under no illusions about mine.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Shut up and look weird and pretty,” Magdalena said. “That’s all I need you to do.”

“If you’re going to insult me, I can leave.”

She kept clinging to his arm. “You won’t.”

“I have more of a spine than you think I do.”

She laughed at him, then. “Herr von Leigh, haven’t you ever heard the phrase, ‘never turn down a free lunch’?”

“I don’t think--”

Magdalena pushed open a final set of double doors, and Yang found himself stepping into a completely different world. They were in a greenhouse of some sort, and the air was thick and warm, with a heady floral scent. He stumbled a little in the unexpected change, blinking in the sunlight. The whole place was filled with flowers, growing high enough to block the lines of sight; Yang had no idea how big the place was. The ground was a pebbled little path, and there were sounds of birdsong and running water. A butterfly flitted past, one with a coloring that Yang had never seen before.

“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” Magdalena said, sounding genuine for the first time. But then she tugged Yang forward through the greenery, giving him no chance to stop and smell the flowers, as it were.

“There you are, Maggie,” Frau Westpfale said as Magdalena turned the corner. “We were just-- Oh.” Her voice fell as Yang appeared.

The three other women were already sitting around a table, laid out with cups of tea and sandwiches. Yang recognized Frau Westpfale right away, and then his glance moved over the other two. He realized that the second woman at the table, who was probably about thirty years old, was Princess Amarie von Goldenbaum, the daughter of the Kaiser. Yang hurried to bow.

“Mother, Amarie, Susanna, this is a good friend of mine, Lieutenant Hank von Leigh,” Magdalena said. “Would you be opposed to him joining us for lunch?”

The princess seemed mostly bored of Magdalena’s antics. “Of course not,” she said. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Yang was frozen for a second, but managed to get out his own, “Honored to meet you, Princess.”

Magdalena had found an extra chair and squeezed it up to the table in between her own place and Susanna’s. Yang hadn’t really regarded the other woman, since his attention had been focused on those he recognized, but now he got a chance to look at her. She was beautiful, about his age, and had long, braided black hair and piercing grey eyes. Her mouth was twisted into a tiny pout, and she looked at Yang with distaste as he sat down next to her.

“Pleasure to meet you as well, Fraulein…?”

“Benemunde,” she said. “How do you happen to know Magdalena?”

“I was the young Fraulein Mariendorf’s escort to the baroness’ winter solstice party,” Yang said.

“And what a wonderful party it was,” Magdalena said, leaning heavily on Yang’s arm. “You should have come, Susanna.”

“Regretfully, I was busy,” she said. “The Kaiser and I were attending a play that night.”

“Always busy, always busy,” Magdalena said. “It’s like you don’t know how to have fun anymore.”

“Maggie,” Frau Westpfale said, a warning tone in her voice. “Not all people live as unburdened of a life as you.”

“I would hardly say I’m burdened, Frau Westpfale,” Benemunde said, and ran a hand over the side of her face, as though she were brushing away a stray hair that wasn’t there. “I don’t care very much for busy parties at the best of times.”

“Next time, I shall have to extend an invitation to the Kaiser,” Magdalena said. “Then you would be obliged to attend with him.”

“My father doesn’t much like parties either,” the princess said. “He didn’t attend Elizabeth’s ninth birthday.”

“That may be less due to the fact that he didn’t like the idea of a party, and more to do with him not liking the other attendees,” Magdalena said dryly.

“Maggie!” Frau Westpfale said again, this time more sharply.

The princess sighed and just took a sip of her tea, giving a look to Frau Westpfale that indicated that she didn’t particularly care if Magdalena spoke out of turn. Still, Frau Westpfale was stiff in her seat, trying not to upset the social atmosphere with ugly looks at her daughter, who was hanging onto Yang’s arm.

There was a brief and awkward pause in the conversation. “Have you been keeping up with your piano practice, Susanna?” Frau Westpfale asked.

“Oh, yes, I have. In my limited spare time.”

“You were always better than I was,” Magdalena said. “The one advantage you had over me.”

“I believe I have several advantages over you, my dear,” Benemunde said.

“Oh,  _ my dear _ , I like that,” Magdalena said with a laugh. “What do you think, mother, am I dear to Susanna?”

Frau Westpfale’s face twisted for a fraction of a second. “I think that you should be grateful for the Marquise’s continued patronage.”

“I’m very grateful, aren’t I?” Magdalena smiled coyly. “Ever so grateful for you looking out for me.”

Yang was utterly stymied by this conversation. There were dynamics at play that he could not possibly grasp, and he wanted nothing more than to escape. All the women were ignoring him, except for Magdalena, who was stroking his arm in a very distracting way. He sat there stiffly, taking her advice to shut up and look pretty, since he figured it was the best way to get out of this social situation without offending anyone. The last thing he wanted was to get on the bad side of what felt like every noble woman on Odin as well as the entire fleet. There was only so long he could survive if both of those groups took offense to him.

The talk continued, moving on to slightly more normal gossip about the other women of the court, then the health of Princess Amarie’s husband, Duke Braunschweig, and her daughter’s success in school, which Magdalena seemed to take a genuine interest in. Of the four women, Magdalena was the only one who ate the sandwiches and other lunch food vigorously-- the other three merely nibbled their sandwiches occasionally and then put them down, in between delicate phrases and pointed words. This made Yang feel very awkward indeed about eating any of the food, even though he was hungry. He drank his tea, which was delicious but did little to calm his nerves.

Everything was going smoothly, with Frau Westpfale and Princess Amarie discussing charitable work that they were engaged in, when there was the distant sound of the door opening into the greenhouse and then several approaching sets of footsteps. Being otherwise completely uninvolved in the conversation, Yang couldn’t resist craning his neck to see who was approaching, so he was the first to see the Kaiser and hurry to his feet, almost knocking his chair over in his haste. The women stood as well, Magdalena seeming very amused by Yang’s half-frantic movements. Yang bowed as the Kaiser and his entourage of a few servants approached.

The Kaiser looked about the same as Yang remembered him, same white hair, same dull voice but sharp eyes. “Susanna, Amarie, I didn’t expect to find you both here,” the Kaiser said.

“We were just enjoying some lunch with the Westpfales,” Amarie said. “Which one of us were you looking for?”

“Susanna, mostly, but I’m always happy to see you, my dear.”

Benemunde smiled at the princess, nodded at Frau Westpfale, and went over to the Kaiser’s side without a second glance at Magdalena. The Kaiser offered her his arm, and she took it.

“It’s always a pleasure to see you as well, Baroness Westpfale,” the Kaiser said. “Are you and your mother doing well?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Magdalena said, leaning on Yang’s arm slightly.

“And there’s the Baroness’ latest amusement,” Benemunde seemed to be unable to stop herself from saying.

“Indeed,” the Kaiser said. He looked at Yang. “You’re von Leigh, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Yang said. Magdalena twitched back in surprise, clearly not expecting the Kaiser to have any idea who he was.

“I’m gratified to see that you survived your school days as instructed.”

“I did my best, Your Majesty.”

“And where are you working now?”

“Under Commodore Bronner, in the Personnel Intelligence unit.”

The Kaiser nodded. “Does it suit you?”

“I serve at the pleasure of the crown,” Yang said. “But yes, I am well suited to the work.”

“That’s good. I look forward to seeing your career develop.”

Yang wasn’t sure if he was supposed to respond to that. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Frau Westpfale,” the Kaiser said with a nod, then turned with Benemunde and headed off down the path. Everyone remaining around the table waited until the greenhouse door opened and shut again before they sat back down. The princess didn’t sit.

“Thank you for coming to lunch,” Princess Amarie said. “I should get back to my husband.”

“Of course,” Frau Westpfale said.

“Come to our manor next Friday?” she asked Frau Wesptfale.

“I’d be delighted,” Frau Westpfale said. “Please have someone let me know the time.”

“I will.” The princess smiled graciously at Magdalena. “You’re welcome, of course, as well, Baroness, but I suspect you have better things to be doing on your Friday nights.”

“Better might be a strong word for it, Princess,” Magdalena said with a smile. “I’m sure my mother will let you know if I’m coming or not.”

“Of course. Pleasure seeing you again, and pleasure meeting you, Lieutenant.”

Yang, who had not been expecting to be addressed, was startled and said, “Oh, thank you, yes. Pleasure to meet you as well.”

She laughed. “I’m not sure if you should be glad to have my father’s attention, but it will make it less awkward should one see you around at social events.”

Yang rubbed the back of his head, unable to contain that nervous habit even in polite company. “The Kaiser has a good memory.”

“Indeed he does. Well, I should go. Until then,” the princess said, nodded, and departed, leaving only the Westpfales at the table.

“I’m going to walk Lieutenant von Leigh out,” Magdalena said before her mother could get a word in edgewise. “I’ll meet you at the carriage.”

“Lieutenant,” Frau Westpfale said, clearly resigned to her daughter’s antics. “It was a surprise to meet you again.”

“Likewise,” Yang said. “I hope I didn’t trouble your lunch.”

“No, and it wouldn’t have been your fault if you had,” Westpfale said. “You seem like enough of a gentleman. I hope that does not change.”

Magdalena frowned and dragged Yang away before he could say anything else to her mother.

“What was that all about?” Yang asked, when they were back inside the hallways of Neue Sanssouci.

“What?”

“What do you want from me?” Yang asked.

“Literally nothing, Hank. I suppose you did a fine job shutting up.”

“I’m glad I could be of service.”

Magdalena sighed. “Look, do you want me to apologize to you?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “You’ve been nothing but confusing.”

“Well, sorry about that.” She crossed her arms as they stood facing each other in the hallway. “If my mother likes you, I can’t have you around.”

“I don’t think she likes me,” Yang said. “I think she was trying to warn me about behaving around you.”

“Sure. But the Kaiser came in and made you look important. That really ruins the novelty.”

“I’m sorry my foreign face couldn’t be more unpleasant to everyone,” Yang said, bitter for the first time.

“Oh, shut up,” Magdalena said. “Isn’t that the least of your problems?”

“And you would know anything about that because…?”

She squinted at him. “You’ll only get your uniform twisted if I make insinuations,” she said. “Let’s just say that I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t assume you were.”

“Good, then we understand each other.”

“Do we?”

“I told you I understand more than you might think, Hank.”

“I can’t say I understand you at all, though.”

“What is there to understand?” Magdalena asked. “I’m just a stupid rich girl who no one can outright say no to, and you’re just a stupid young lieutenant I’m stringing along for my own amusement until I eventually get bored of you. I’ll leave you heartbroken in a few months, and then I’ll find somebody else to amuse myself with. Isn’t that it?”

Yang was silent for a long second. “And that’s the game you want to play?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see why.”

“It beats the alternative,” she said finally, waving her hand and signalling an end to the conversation.

“Could you at least give me fair warning before you drag me into something next time?”

“You still assume there will be a next time.” She pulled on a curl of her own hair. “Perhaps.”

“I suppose when we next run into each other, I’ll be prepared for you to lunge at me.”

She chuckled at that. “We don’t exactly run in the same social circles.”

“I don’t have much of a social circle.”

“You shouldn’t say that type of thing around women whose only job is to amuse themselves. My birthday is early next month. I might invite you.”

“Er. Okay.”

* * *

When Yang returned to his apartment, he was so mentally exhausted by the events of the day that he flopped onto his bed and fell asleep, despite it only being around two in the afternoon. When he woke, the muted winter daylight had changed to an even murkier winter twilight, and his room was freezing cold. He stumbled out of bed, feeling the kind of nausea that comes from sleeping at the wrong time, and struggled to light a fire in his hearth. When he had done that, and rinsed out his mouth in the sink, and eaten about ten cookies from a dry package he kept for late night consumption, he was feeling alive enough to consider the fact that he was now awake and should do something with his evening.

He sat down in his armchair in front of the fire, stretching out his toes towards it until they became almost unpleasantly hot, then searched in his pockets for his phone.

He discovered that he had one message waiting for him, one that he hadn’t been expecting at all.

> I find myself back on Odin earlier than expected. Are you free this evening?

Reuenthal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yang "sasses his boss at every opportunity" Wenli. Yang "yes I could take iserlohn if I wanted to but why in the world would I want to" Wenli. Yang "godawful sense of self preservation" Wenli.
> 
> Lydia said to me a while ago that in order these are the types of people you want in your military: 1. competent and loyal, 2. incompetent and loyal, 3. incompetent and disloyal, 4. competent and disloyal. Unfortunately, Yang has let everybody get a little bit too close to realizing that he is in category 4, baby. (You could put another axis on here for 'motivated' but Yang Wenli's position on that axis varies by circumstance lol. he thinks he's lazy but... he will do nonsense if he has to)
> 
> As far as the space battle game in this chapter goes, I wrote it by trying to put a Yang Wenli twist on what the wiki described as the fourth battle of Iserlohn. That made my job in writing it significantly easier lol.
> 
> As for what Yang says afterwards, about the way that the FTL travel works, I make that shit up baby. I don't think it's ever well explained in canon so I'm slowly piecing together my own "rules" for it.
> 
> Must be pretty awkward to be the kaiser's daughter and eat lunch with his concubine, who's like ten years younger than you are. In this house we feel somewhat bad for Susanna Benemunde, even if she does try to kill Reinhard and Annerose like a whole bunch of times. At this time, the crown prince is still alive, so there's no reason for all of these women to be at eachother's throats over succession for their children (yet).
> 
> What, exactly, is Magdalena's deal? [eyes emoji]
> 
> The long awaited Return of Reuenthal. Sorry for leaving you on a cliff hanger but you know I'll be back in like two days lol.
> 
> As always, thank you to Lydia for the beta read. You can find more fights for succession for the crown @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven and more uhhhhh thinking your boss is fucked up @ bit.ly/arcadispark . I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter.


	6. Reunion of the 479 Mafia

_ February 480 IC, Odin _

The bar that they met in was in the center of the capital, and, as far as Yang knew, neither he nor Reuenthal had ever been there before; it was just conveniently located near the hotel Reuenthal was staying in. The place was dim, smoky, and loud, but at least it was warm inside. Outside, a nasty sleet had begun to fall, making Yang’s walk from the train station viscerally unpleasant. He was glad to find a booth to sit down in, and he kept anxiously alternating between checking his phone and glancing towards the entrance to see when Reuenthal would arrive.

Reuenthal somehow managed to see Yang before Yang saw Reuenthal, and he slid into the booth across from him, startling Yang enough that he dropped his phone onto the table, where it bounced and then slid to the floor.

“I suppose I’d be disappointed if you somehow learned to be graceful in the eight months I’d been gone,” Reuenthal said, a smile audible in his voice.

Yang had to duck under the table to get his phone before he could answer. “I can’t believe that’s how long it’s been,” he said when he finally came back to the surface, his hair flopping into his face.

Reuenthal looked as put together as he always did, somehow unaffected by the nasty weather outside. He seemed pleased and relaxed, which was more than Yang could say for himself. He assumed that Reuenthal had been reading through the lines of his letters, so he must know about what had happened at El Facil, really, but there was so much that he had not said.

They ordered some beers, and raised their glasses to each other when they arrived.

“You don’t look that much different,” Reuenthal said. “Aside from that extra stripe on your shoulder.”

“Hah, yeah,” Yang rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly embarrassed. “It’s really… I shouldn’t have gotten it.”

“Did you think I would be jealous that you were promoted before I was?” Reuenthal asked, raising his eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “You haven’t enjoyed me beating you in the past.”

“Oh?”

“I recall right before our freshman year ended, you--”

“You think me comparable to a cadet? You wound me, Leigh,” Reuenthal said.

“Anyway, I didn’t really deserve it. Half of it was Rear Admiral Merkatz thinking I was better suited to command than I actually was, and the other half is just an excuse to get rid of me.”

“I see.”

“I’m sure you’ll get promoted soon, too. It’s not like people stay sub-lieutenants for very long.”

“I don’t feel like I need the reassurance, but thank you for giving it,” Reuenthal said, smiling. “You seem very on edge about it.”

“Perceptive.”

“It doesn’t take a mind reader when you’re practically pulling your hair off the back of your head,” Reuenthal said. “I’ve missed your bad habits, I suppose.”

Yang looked at him. “I would say the same, except I’m not aware of any bad habits of yours. Perhaps I’ve missed your good influence upon me.”

Reuenthal smiled a little. “Had I been with you at El Facil, would you have made the same choices?”

“I don’t know what circumstances would have led to us being there together,” Yang said.

“I’m just trying to find out if I’m actually a good influence on you.”

“Oh.” Yang said. He took a sip of his beer. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure which way you would like me to answer that question.”

“Is it unfair of me to ask?” 

“Unfair? I don’t know. Maybe it’s impossible to answer.” There was a moment of silence between them. “I have missed you,” Yang finally said.

“Likewise.” Reuenthal smiled a little, then took a sip of his beer.

“What are you doing back on Odin so early?”

“The Teutonic had trouble with its stardrive, so we ended up limping back to port,” Reuenthal said. “Since she’ll need to be in drydock for repairs for the next month or so, everyone’s leave schedule was rearranged. I’m a free man until they call me back.”

“So you’re on Odin for the foreseeable future?”

“If you can only see a month out, then yes.”

“You said you were staying in a hotel?”

“Yes.”

“You should come stay with me,” Yang offered. “No point in wasting your money on a month in a hotel room.”

“How generous of you to offer.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I’ll consider it,” Reuenthal said.

Yang rolled his eyes. “It’s not like you’re dependent on my charity. I’m just offering because that is what friends do.”

“Friends,” Reuenthal said. “That’s true.” He tilted his glass in his hand, the beer catching the dim light. “But it would be much easier for me to entertain friends of my own in a hotel than in your house.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Do you see Mittermeyer often?” Reuenthal asked.

“About once a week or so,” Yang said. “It’s not exactly easy for him to get to the city, and it’s not easy for me to get out to the IOA either, so not as often as I’d like. But more than I would if I was in space, anyway.”

“And how is he?”

“Have you talked to him?”

“I asked if he would like to meet me tonight, and he said he had an exam that he was studying for.”

Yang nodded and didn’t quite meet Reuenthal’s eyes, which Reuenthal noticed. 

“You’re not very good at pretending that nothing’s wrong,” Reuenthal said. “It’s a great weakness of yours that will probably get you killed.”

“You should talk to him,” Yang said. “That’s all.”

“You could answer my previous question asking how he is.”

“I don’t even know,” Yang said. “He hasn’t had an easy year.”

“Why not?”

“Look, Reuenthal, this really isn’t business of his that I should go airing to you. He would prefer to talk to you himself.”

“Is he avoiding me?”

“I don’t doubt that he does have some kind of exam to study for,” Yang said. “If you think he would have come out here anyway, or had you meet him at Joseph’s, if he was feeling better, then yeah, sure.” Yang scowled a little.

“I’m certain that the answer to this question is no, but forgive me for making sure. You’re not involved, are you?”

Yang choked on the sip of beer he was in the middle of taking. “No.” He coughed a little, then wiped his mouth on a napkin.

“For once, I’m glad that you’re a terrible liar.”

“You can trust me to be honest, for whatever that’s worth.”

“I believe your word is worth a great deal,” Reuenthal said.

A silence fell between them once again. There was a tension that Yang had forgotten existed between them, and he would have said that he hated it, except for the fact that he enjoyed spending time with Reuenthal, tension or no. “How have you been?” he finally asked. “I haven’t heard anything from you about what far-patrol is like, or being the security officer.”

“It’s been boring,” Reuenthal said. “Spending months just creeping around the other side of the galaxy, hoping that the ship doesn’t get detected, sending out reconaissance probes…” Reuenthal brushed a piece of hair off his forehead. “Some would describe it as stressful but unexciting.”

“But not you?”

“I take it in stride,” Reuenthal said. “I don’t prefer it as an assignment, but Captain Hetling is an easy man to work with, so I will probably serve out another tour with him before asking to be reassigned.”

Yang nodded. “I’m glad that you haven’t had any problems.”

Some of his own problems must have shown through in his voice, because Reunthal asked, “Unlike yourself, I presume?”

He leaned sideways on the wall of the booth and pulled his knees up to his chest before answering. “I don’t even know if I would describe it as ‘problems’, exactly.”

“Oh?”

“I think my commanding officer is insane, maybe.”

“That sounds thrilling.”

“I assume you did eventually read the message that Mittermeyer sent you, back in November?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Bronner pretended to be an MP to go bother him. He is obsessed with theatrics, in a literal sense.”

“Every man has his passions,” Reuenthal said.

“Sure. But it makes him into essentially a compulsive liar. Just today--” Yang was getting slightly worked up. He stopped and shook his head and took another sip of beer.

“What happened today?” Reuenthal asked.

“I need to never set foot in Neue Sanssouci again. Every time I go there, I feel like something ridiculous happens.”

“You’re making me curious.”

“I dictated policy to Fleet Admiral Muckenburger, had a lovely lunch with Princess Amarie von Goldenbaum, and then spoke cordially with the Kaiser in the palace,” Yang said, waving his hand.

Reuenthal was silent for a moment. “And what did you actually do at Neue Sanssouci today?”

“Oh, no, all of that actually happened.”

“I see.”

Yang explained his day, though he had to go back in time to first describe his ideas about Iserlohn. He told Reuenthal all about how Bronner had tricked him, his embarrassment in front of Muckenburger, and getting pulled into the ridiculous lunch with Magdalena von Westpfale. Reuenthal silently listened, watching Yang grow more and more agitated as he spoke. While he was describing it, they both got another round of beers from the waitress.

“I think you can calm down,” Reuenthal said.

“Can I?”

“I vaguely recall that at one point Wahlen said that you should try to take advantage of these kinds of opportunities. Perhaps ingratiating yourself with the nobility is a good thing.”

“I wish we could trade places,” Yang said. “I think you’d be far better at playing this role than I would.”

“I somehow doubt it,” Reuenthal said. “You’ve fallen into at least part of this situation because you have a particular air about you.”

“I have no idea what you mean by that,” Yang said, and took a long drink from his beer. He was suddenly realizing that he desperately wanted to be drunk.

“I think people are struck by your honesty and your… what’s the best word for it… general guilelessness. Even when you’re trying to lie.” Reuenthal stopped and shrugged. “People seem to trust you, even though they shouldn’t. Maybe Bronner thinks he can turn you into a clever pawn.”

“I have no idea why anyone trusts me.”

“If I could put forward a theory?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe the fact that you’re obviously an outsider is an advantage. People see that and assume that there’s little going on beneath the surface. They’re not seeing the whole of you. And once someone thinks they’ve seen the issue, they’re far less likely to look for others.”

“Like Iserlohn,” Yang muttered into his beer.

“What?”

“Iserlohn. It’s a distraction from other options.”

“Oh, right, I had almost forgotten that was your opinion.”

“It’s only gotten stronger since going there in person.”

“I see.” Reuenthal studied him for a moment. “I have to ask, though. How did Baroness Westpfale know you in the first place?”

Yang tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “I met her at a party.”

“Oh?”

“Count Mariendorf asked me to be Hilde’s escort, which I shouldn’t have agreed to. You know I don’t like parties.”

“But unfortunately, you would do anything for Hildegarde Mariendorf.”

“I can’t help it,” Yang said. “She’s very sweet.”

“I understand. So, you went to a party.”

“And Hilde demanded that she speak to me, which she did, and she decided that she wanted me to…” He threw up his hands. “I don’t even understand what she wanted from me. To make her mother angry, I suppose? I don’t know why.”

“When we used to play our game, you were so much better at determining people’s reasoning and strategies.”

“It’s completely different,” Yang said. “I can’t understand her, no matter how much I learn, or see her, or think about her.”

“And do you spend much time thinking about her and seeing her?”

“Seeing her? Maybe cumulatively an hour and a half of my life. Thinking about her? I wish I didn’t have to.”

“You sound like she has an outsized influence on you.”

Yang didn’t say anything for a long moment, and took a drink from his beer, finishing his glass. He hoped the waitress would come around soon with more. He was still far too sober for this conversation, but it was happening anyway. “At this party, she seemed to have decided that I had some kind of interest in her, or something.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know!”

It was at this point that the waitress came around with another round of beers. They had gone through their first slowly, their second quickly, and Yang was looking to beat that previous record with their third.

“It’s not like it’s illegal to have an interest in a woman,” Reuenthal said.

Yang scowled. 

“So, what happened?”

“She dragged me into her library and kissed me, I don’t know.” 

“What is there not to know?” Reuenthal asked. Yang couldn’t quite look at him, but he could hear the odd tone in his voice.

“I shouldn’t have told you that,” Yang said.

“It’s not as though you could keep it much of a secret.”

“Maybe I will, next time.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Some of the air seemed to go out of Yang. “You’re right.”

“I’ll take that as a victory.”

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to win.”

“Nothing,” Reuenthal said. “Absolutely nothing.” After a moment, he said, “Did you enjoy it, at least?”

“I don’t know. No? Yes?” He was flustered now. “If you’re trying to find out if it’s serious, I guess I can at least answer that, no. She thinks I’m a charity case, or a tool, or something, but I don’t think she intends for this to go anywhere.”

“But do you?”

“I would be very stupid if I did. And I think the further it goes, the worse my life will get.” Yang shrugged, feeling miserable.

“I see.”

“I think you see something,” Yang said. “I have no idea if you’re seeing the truth or not.”

“Didn’t you tell me once that there wasn’t any such thing?”

“Yeah, probably. I keep saying that.”

“It is an odd opinion that only you seem to hold.”

Yang shook his head and was silent.

“We seem to have gone from one strange topic to another,” Reuenthal said. He finished his third glass of beer. “Shall we talk about something less fraught for a while?”

“Please,” Yang said.

Reuenthal tilted his head and looked at him. “Tell me about how the Mariendorfs are doing, then.”

Yang did, relieved. Though the tension didn’t go away, it eased a little, and the more drunk he got, the easier it was to smile and laugh with Reuenthal, who also seemed to be amused by him. 

“I have work tomorrow,” Yang finally managed to say, through the haze of being thoroughly plastered.

“So?” Reuenthal asked.

“I should go home.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know what the alternative is.”

Reuenthal looked like he was about to say something else, but he said, “Drink until they kick us out.”

“And then I would be in the same place, but with a worse headache in the morning,” Yang said. He was dizzy, as he stood, and he fished around blearily in his pocket for his charge card to pay their tab.

“I’ll get it,” Reuenthal said, standing and going to the bar to pay before Yang could protest. The bar was emptier now-- it was quite late for a weeknight.

The pair walked outside together. The nasty sleet had stopped while they were inside, but it had been replaced by a biting wind. Yang struggled to put his gloves on, and Reuenthal reached across the distance between them and fixed Yang’s collar, which had somehow gotten turned wrong. “Thanks,” Yang muttered.

“See you this weekend?” Reuenthal asked.

“Sure,” Yang said. “Just text me.”

“I will.”

“I’m glad you’re back on Odin.”

“I am glad to see you.”

“Yeah.” They were standing out on the street, each one reluctant to leave. Reuenthal finally put his hand on Yang’s arm, a gesture that started gentle, then turned into a bit of a shove. 

“Saturday, then.”

“Yeah.” Yang started walking, stumbling a little, towards the train station. He kept glancing back over his shoulder, and Reuenthal eventually turned and headed back towards his hotel.

* * *

That Saturday was one of those days in February that trick everyone into thinking that spring had arrived ahead of schedule. It was so nice out that when Yang woke up (late), he texted Reuenthal and asked if he would rather meet somewhere outside, rather than-- well, Yang didn’t know where they had been planning to meet. A bar, probably. Though it seemed like a dangerous proposition to spend an entire day in a bar.

Reuenthal agreed, and so rather than going to the center of the capital, Yang took the bus to the closest nature reserve, a place a bit outside the city limits whose main attraction was a long walk around a lake. 

The parking lot where Yang got off the bus was full of geese, and they hissed at Yang when he tried to apologetically edge his way through them.

“Don’t disturb the wildlife,” a familiar voice yelled at him from across the parking lot. Yang glanced up, which was a mistake, because it gave a chance for one of the geese to get a little too close for comfort, spreading its wings and hissing at him. Yang stumbled forward out of its range, then jogged the rest of the way towards Mittermeyer, who was sitting on a bench, clearly waiting for him.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Yang said.

“You didn’t think to invite me,” Mittermeyer said with a smile. “How rude.”

“Well, I didn’t know if you wanted…” Yang shrugged. “Wait, how did you even get here so fast?” He glanced at his watch. “Saturday physicals only let out half an hour ago.”

Mittermeyer flushed and looked at anything other than Yang, taking great interest in the geese strutting around behind him. “Well, I missed them.”

It was at this moment that Yang noticed the prominent bruise poking up over the edge of Mittermeyer’s collar. Yang raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever gotten a demerit for missing physicals in your life?”

“No,” Mittermeyer said. “I feel pretty bad about it, to be honest.”

“Well, first time for everything,” Yang shrugged. “And don’t feel bad. I missed physicals… like… constantly.”

“I’m well aware. The fact that you didn’t get kicked out is some kind of miracle.”

“Miracle Leigh, that’s me.” Yang rubbed the back of his head. “Where is Reuenthal, by the way?”

Mittermeyer jerked his head towards the visitors’ center. “Bathroom.”

“So, are you feeling better about your problem?”

“I don’t know.” It had perhaps been the wrong question to ask, because Mittermeyer tensed up a little. Yang sat down on the bench next to him. “I told you that I think differently when I’m by myself.”

“That’s true,” Yang said. “But are you happier?”

Mittermeyer looked towards the visitors’ center. “Yeah. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Well, you seem slightly unhappy now.”

“It’s all so stupid,” Mittermeyer said. “I wish it didn’t make me happy, because then I wouldn’t have to have this problem.”

“That makes very little sense.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me. I don’t have a horse in this race.”

“You don’t?”

“Mittermeyer, seriously?”

Mittermeyer glanced over at him. “I know you wouldn’t.” He sighed. 

“I’m not lying when I say that I just want you to be happy.”

“You seem fundamentally incapable of lying well, so I am aware that that is-- You know what, nevermind.”

“Thanks for not continuing to insult me,” Yang said mildly. He wasn’t that offended. “Did you actually talk to Reuenthal?”

Mittermeyer shrugged a little sheepishly. “I mean, kinda.”

“Great.” It was flatly delivered, and Yang scuffed the cold ground with his foot, sending some pebbles skittering out from under the bench and onto the asphalt. “Does he understand where you’re coming from?”

“How would I know?”

It was at this point that Reuenthal emerged from the visitors’ center and strode over to where they sat on the bench. “It shocks me that you, of all people, picked an outdoor venue.”

“I like spending time outdoors,” Yang said.

“You like laying on the warm grass and reading a book, which is not exactly the same as a winter hike.”

Yang laughed and stood. “I don’t think that it’s a severe enough path to be called a hike, nor is it that cold. I just figured that you would appreciate a change of scenery, since you’ve been on a ship for the past eight months.”

“You’re not wrong,” Reuenthal said. “I almost wish that I could have kept to the original leave schedule, so that the weather would be nicer.”

“Almost?” Yang asked.

Reuenthal glanced at Mittermeyer, a rather smug expression on his face. “Well, there are other things more important and pleasant than the weather.”

Mittermeyer smiled, possibly despite himself, and also stood up from the bench. “Shall we get going?”

“If we stand still too long we might freeze,” Reuenthal said. They headed down the parking lot, circumnavigating the geese, towards the trail. 

The lake was still frozen around the edges, and the path cut through thick growths of bare trees, which the wind occasionally gusted through, causing their dry branches to creak and rattle against each other. The day was sunny and clear, but the lack of greenery still made the scene appear a little grey. 

Although the trio started out right next to each other, it didn’t take very long for Reuenthal and Mittermeyer to get ahead of Yang, who wasn’t compelled to rush. He was happy to watch them, or he was happy to pretend to be happy for them, which was the same. They were essentially the only people in the park, and they would have been able to hear other people coming far down the path, so Reuenthal felt comfortable enough to slide his arm rather posessively around Mittermeyer’s back, his hand ending up in Mittermeyer’s jacket pocket. They spoke quietly enough that Yang could only hear snatches of their conversation, and occasional laughter from Mittermeyer. They both seemed more relaxed than they had been apart, and Yang decided that it did actually make him glad to see them both happy. It was almost as though the past few months hadn’t happened, and they had slipped right back into the old rhythms of life that they had been so comfortable with. 

He tried not to let himself get too far down the trap of thinking that this was unchanging. After all, in a little while, they would finish their solitary walk around the park. In a few weeks, Reuenthal would be back in space. In a few months, Mittermeyer would graduate and end up who-knows-where. It was all in a state of flux, and trying to hold on to this one moment like it could say anything about the future was, Yang knew, a mistake. But even though he knew it, he couldn’t help it.

After a while, Mittermeyer turned back towards Yang and told him to stop being so slow, apparently realizing that it was a little rude to have let Yang fall so far behind them. Yang smiled and jogged to catch up. He hadn’t wanted to intrude, but he was happy to be reinvited to the conversation, talking broadly about his and Reuenthal’s work, and how Mittermeyer’s last year of school was going. It was pleasant talk, and it pushed some of the worries and fear that he had been holding onto out of his mind.

* * *

_ March 480 IC, Odin _

Bronner came over to Yang’s desk one day and tossed an envelope in front of him. The envelope was thick cream stock, and it was ripped completely open on the top.

“I have no idea why I am receiving your correspondence, Leigh,” Bronner said, sounding annoyed.

Yang picked up the envelope and flipped it over to read the address. It had “Hank von Leigh ℅ Commodore Bronner” and then Bronner’s home address written on it. The sender was, unsurprisingly, Baroness Magdalena Westpfale.

“You didn’t have to open it, sir.”

“If it’s coming to my house, I’m opening it. You can give the baroness your address, so she doesn’t have to use me as a glorified postman.”

“Well, thank you for doing your duty regardless.”

“Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night,” Bronner quoted, then left, calling over his shoulder, “Enjoy your party.”

Yang scowled down at the envelope in his hands, then pulled out the lavish invitation to Magdalena’s birthday party. The invitation was standard, naming a time and place (a country estate, not her house close to the capital, Yang noted) but Magdalena had scribbled a personal note along the bottom, in handwriting that somehow managed to be both the pristine kind ground into her by, Yang was sure, years of finishing school, and the sloppy kind of Magdalena projecting her devil-may-care attitude into whatever she did.

_ Hank, _

_ I threatened to invite you, and I’m making good on my threats. Don’t bother bringing a gift (I don’t trust you to know my taste). Feel free to bring a friend or two, though. The more the merrier. _

_ By the way, just in case you’re wondering, I actually want you to come. And, no, my mother won’t be there to torture, so don’t worry about THAT. _

_ Your friend, _

_ Maggie _

Yang could not interpret that at all. Through the rest of his workday, the letter sat on his desk and haunted him. Eventually, he texted Reuenthal and Mittermeyer, asking if they had any desire to go. Yang couldn’t see a way to get out, but since Magdalena had said that he could bring friends, it would be nice to at least have some pleasant company. She was probably just trying to balance out the gender ratio of her party.

It took some cajoling, but Mittermeyer and Reuenthal both eventually agreed to attend. Yang had bet that a night out with free alcohol was worth the moderate social pain of attending a party full of people they didn’t know. At the very worst, Yang figured that the three of them could find a corner to stand around in and amuse themselves. It would be better than Yang being there alone. He thanked the other two for taking pity on him.

The party was on a Friday night, and it was, unfortunately, the last Friday before Reuenthal would be returning to his ship. The three met up at the capital train station, since none of them had a car. Reuenthal and Yang were dressed in their dress uniforms, but Mittermeyer was wearing civilian clothes, a nice red suit with a white cravate. Yang was surprised; he hadn’t seen Mittermeyer in anything other than his uniform in a long time.

“Didn’t want to look like a cadet?” Yang asked as they sat across from each other on the train ride.

“Reuenthal suggested it,” Mittermeyer said, flushing a little and looking out the window at the dark scenery rushing past.

“There are worse things to be than a cadet,” Reuenthal said, leaning back in his seat. “But not very many.”

“We went to the Mariendorfs’ party in our cadet uniforms,” Yang pointed out.

“The Mariendorfs have far different standards,” Reuenthal said.

“Great,” Yang muttered.

“You were the one who dined with Princess Amarie,” Reuenthal said. “Just because you lack an appropriate understanding of social class, does not mean that social class ceases to exist.”

Yang glanced at Mittermeyer, who was frowning a little. “I guess I’m glad that I invited you, so you can tell me all the many different ways that I’m embarrassing myself,” Yang said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Reunthal said. “You said the Baroness keeps you around for her amusement. She probably finds it funny to see you act graceless.”

“What’s put you in a mood?” Yang asked.

Reuenthal did not change his expression. “I’m perfectly happy,” he said, which was clearly a lie. 

“None of us are particularly well suited to a party full of real nobility,” Mittermeyer said. “My family is common as mud.” Unspoken was that Yang was obviously foreign, and Reuenthal had been disgraced from his family, on both sides of the line, as far as Yang could tell.

Maybe Yang shouldn’t have invited them. “You didn’t have to come if you didn’t want to.”

“And abandon you to the wolves?” Mittermeyer asked. “I’d rather not.”

“Thanks,” Yang said. “I do appreciate it.”

“You should try to be in a better mood,” Mittermeyer said to Reuenthal. “There are worse ways to spend a Friday night.”

“But there are better ones, too,” Reuenthal said. He smiled slightly at Mittermeyer.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving on Tuesday,” Mittermeyer said.

“It’s the way things go. When I get back, I’m sure Leigh and I will be the same rank again.”

“And order will have been restored to the universe,” Yang said. 

“You’re just taking your rightful place as first,” Mittermeyer said. 

Yang shook his head. “It seems so stupid to care about all that, now.”

“Yeah, it is,” Mittermeyer said. 

When they arrived at the train station, they hailed a taxi to bring them to the party’s location. The taxi took them up a steep, thickly forested hill. It was dark out already, so the pine trees seemed to close in around the car’s headlights. Light finally broke through the foliage, spilling onto the road out from a house, smaller than Yang had expected but still clearly the country home of someone with money.

Yang looked around as they walked up to the house, taking in the rustic aesthetic of the architecture, the other cars parked along the driveway, and the sound of music coming out distantly through the house. He wondered if he would have to ring the bell or something, but the door of the house was just propped open. It seemed odd-- from the other parties that Yang had attended, there was usually a servant or someone waiting around to greet guests as they arrived.

Reuenthal simply strode through the open door, walking past Yang who was hesitating as though unsure if he should cross the threshold. Mittermeyer shrugged and followed Reuenthal in.

They walked towards the source of the music. It wasn’t the dance music that would have been heard at a more formal party, and it was definitely a recording rather than a live band. Yang thought he recognized some Phezzani song.

The main room of the house where the party seemed to be was dark and full of people, none of whom Yang recognized, talking loudly over the music. There was a table set up with a wide variety of alcohol and a less wide variety of food, and Reuenthal immediately went over to it and got them all drinks. While he was doing that, Yang was scanning the room for Magdalena.

She always managed to approach him from the angle he was least expecting, though, and while Reuenthal was passing him a glass she found him and sidled up beside him.

“Who’s tall, dark, and handsome that you’ve brought with you, Hank?” Magdalena asked. Yang was so startled that he jumped. She was wearing a purple dress, one that was significantly slinkier than the ball gown that he had seen her in at the winter solstice party. She still had her matching fan, though, and she tapped Yang’s arm with it.

Reuenthal laughed. “Baroness Westpfale, I presume?”

“Maggie to my friends,” she said. 

Yang recovered some of his senses. “Magdalena, these are my friends, Oskar von Reuenthal and Wolfgang Mittermeyer.”

“Oh, aren’t you cute,” she said to Mittermeyer. “Isn’t this fun?”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Mittermeyer said. He was understandably cautious, since Yang had described his interactions with Magdalena in full, but Magdalena seemed to have no actual interest in causing anything other than mild embarrassment.

“Are you in the fleet?” she asked.

“Er, not yet,” Mittermeyer said. “Still a cadet.”

“Perfect,” Magdalena said, though Yang had no idea what she meant by that comment.

“We all went to school together,” Yang clarified. “Mittermeyer is one year below Reuenthal and I.”

“And he’s the only one who got the memo about the dress code,” Magdalena said. “You two look too stiff.”

“Sorry,” Yang said. “Oh, I brought this for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wrapped package.

“You shouldn’t have,” Magdalena said. “In fact, I told you not to.”

“Well, it felt rude to come without a gift,” Yang said, rubbing the back of his head. “It is your birthday.”

Reuenthal was watching this interaction with an inscrutable expression. “What did he get you? I’m curious.”

Magdalena raised an eyebrow at Reuenthal, then delicately peeled back the wrapping of the package, revealing a book. In the dim light, she squinted to read the title. “ _ History of Phezzani Textiles and Fashions _ , Barnett.” She flipped through it to look at the various plate illustrations, and Yang felt a little pleased that she lingered over a few of them. “Thanks, Hank,” she said. “I can see you’re trying to educate me, though I’m sure it won’t work.”

“You’re right that I wasn’t sure what your tastes were. But I figured…” He shrugged.

“You succeeded in getting me a gift I might like, and in making your friend jealous,” she said with a nod and small smile at Reuenthal, who frowned down at her.

“Jealous?” Mittermeyer asked.

“I think not,” Reuenthal said.

Magdalena tapped her own nose with her fan. “Perhaps.” She half turned. “Ingrid! Come here, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” she called across the room.

A woman who was loitering by herself over by the windows looked up. She was wearing a much more conservative dress than Magdalena was, and she appeared to be a year or so younger. She had curly red hair and a delicate, freckled face. She smiled at Magdalena as she came over, and Magdalena wrapped her arm around Ingrid’s shoulders, fingers trailing over her bare upper arm in a way that Yang could not help but notice.

“Ingrid, this is Hank von Leigh, who I told you about, and his friends, Oskar von Reuenthal and Wolfgang Mittermeyer. Hank, Oskar, Wolf, this is Ingrid von Roscher, but really, soon to be Ingrid von Goldenbaum. She’s betrothed to Prince Ludwig.”

“Oh?” Reuenthal asked. “Pleasure, my lady.” He offered her his hand, and then when she gave him hers, he lifted it and kissed her fingers. Yang involuntarily glanced at Mittermeyer, who had a vaguely annoyed though still neutrally pleasant smile on his face.

“Good thing the prince isn’t here to see you do  _ that _ ,” Magdalena said, which caused Ingrid to giggle.

“Am I not allowed to be a gentleman?” Reuenthal asked. 

“Most certainly not,” Magdalena said. “There are no gentlemen allowed at my parties. Only scoundrels, scamps, rapscallions, blackguards, and the like.”

Yang snorted at that. “You’ll fit right in then, Reuenthal.”

“And so will you,” Reuenthal said smoothly, stepping back.

“But poor Herr Mittermeyer,” Ingrid said, “neither of you have said that he isn’t a gentleman. Should he be cast out?”

“Mittermeyer is the best of us, it’s true,” Reuenthal said, glancing at him with a slight smile that Mittermeyer couldn’t help but return. “I’ve tried to corrupt him with my evil ways, but he’s having very little of it, unfortunately.” Reuenthal was amused, playing a game with the language again, though Mittermeyer looked at Yang somewhat helplessly.

“Did you corrupt Hank with your evil ways as well?” Magdalena asked. It seemed to be a pointed question.

“No,” Reuenthal said. “He was like this when I found him.”

Magdalena laughed. “I can imagine.”

“Can you?” Yang asked.

“Of course. I have a  _ very _ vivid imagination.” She leaned heavily on Ingrid’s shoulder. “Shall we go bother someone else, darling?”

“If you must,” Ingrid said, clearly long suffering.

“Thank you again for the gift, Hank,” Magdalena said. “I’m sure it will make stimulating bedtime reading.”

“You don’t have to tease me,” Yang said, but by that point, Magdalena was already wandering off with Ingrid in tow, stepping away lightly to the beat of the music.

“What a strange woman,” Mittermeyer said when she had left.

“She’s something,” Yang said, rubbing the back of his head. “I have no idea what she wants from me.”

“I believe she really does just find you funny,” Reuenthal said. 

After Magdalena wandered away, there was no one else who wanted to talk to them, which suited them fine. The three of them found a seat on two couches facing each other, with Yang on one side and Mittermeyer and Reuenthal on the other. Yang sank down into the cushions pretty far, and Reuenthal kicked his long legs up on the coffee table in front of him. There was plenty of alcohol, and the atmosphere at the party was relaxed, even though all of the guests were nobles. It probably helped that most of the guests were Magdalena’s age. It was quite possible that Yang and Reuenthal were the oldest people in the building. A few girls came over towards them, as though to talk to one of them, but Reuenthal and Mittermeyer were generally so deep in conversation that they walked away without intruding. 

The alcohol was readily available, and that meant that they drank it.

At one point, Yang was getting himself another beer, and Magdalena found him again. She pulled him away from the drink table, and Yang glanced back at Mittermeyer and Reuenthal, neither of whom were looking at him. Yang followed Magdalena away, down a hallway. They ended up in a brightly lit kitchen. Magdalena hopped up onto the kitchen island, sitting with her hands on the edge of the marble countertop.

“You’re not about to jump me, are you?” Yang asked.

“No,” she said, swinging her legs. “I just wanted to talk.”

“About?”

“You and your friends,” she said.

Immediately, Yang was defensive. He crossed his arms a little. “What about us?”

“What in the world made you decide to bring your ex and his new guy here together?”

Yang was thrown completely off guard by everything that Magdalena was saying. “What?”

Magdalena raised an eyebrow. “Don’t try to deny it.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I think I do,” she said. “Did you want to make him jealous? I could help you with that, if you wanted. I guess it’s only fair.”

“No!” Yang stepped back a little, worried that the forward-leaning Magdalena would decide to make a real move.

“Then what did you bring him here for?”

“Reuenthal is my friend!” Yang hissed. “And I don’t appreciate the insinuations that you’re making.”

“Did I somehow read this wrong?” Magdalena asked. She lifted her fan that was trapped underneath her hand and tapped her chin with it. “I don’t think so.”

“You most certainly did.”

“They’re not being very subtle out there,” she said.

Yang squinted at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re not very good at lying.”

Yang frowned. “What do you want?”

“Nothing, I swear. I’m just curious.”

“You wanted me to come to your party, you said I could invite friends, so I invited my friends. That’s it. That’s all there is to the story.”

“You know I don’t care, right? I’m more capable of keeping secrets than anybody else in the world.”

“I don’t think that’s true. And if it were true, we would not be having this conversation, because you would understand the value of discretion, and of not starting rumors that could ruin two or three people’s careers.”

“I keep telling you that I understand a lot more than you think,” Magdalena said. “You can trust me, you know.”

Yang shook his head. “I think you have misunderstood what it takes for me to trust someone. If you were just-- Nevermind.” He was too drunk to be having this conversation.

“If I was just what?”

“If it was just me-- that’s different,” Yang said. “I’m not going to let you talk about Reuenthal and Mittermeyer.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Loyal to him, are you?”

“Stop,” Yang said. “Please.”

“Alright, alright, fine.” She hopped down off the counter. “Don’t tell me anything. That’s your business, I guess.” She sounded disappointed, but Yang wasn’t going to fall for whatever act this was. She left the kitchen without him, and Yang got a drink of water from the sink. Maybe he should try to sober up. Maybe he should switch places with Reuenthal on the couch.

When he returned to his friends and sat down, he could see what Magdalena meant about them not being subtle. They weren’t touching, exactly, except for their knees, but the couch was far wider than the space they were taking up, and they were turned towards each other, leaning forward and moving in tiny, synchronized ways. Yang tried not to look at it too closely.

“Where did you go?” Mittermeyer asked. 

“Getting some water in the kitchen,” Yang said. “I’m too drunk.”

“No such thing,” Reuenthal said.

“I think at least one of us should be functional. You can keep drinking if you want.”

“I think I will,” Reuenthal said, and raised his glass. “Prosit, Hank von Leigh.”

Yang sighed and raised his cup of water. “Prosit.”

His conversation with Magdalena had put him on edge, and as Mittermeyer and Reuenthal became drunker, Yang became more sober, which was not an ideal match. The music felt too loud, now, and Yang was beginning to remember why he hated parties. He kept glancing at his watch, wondering when would be an acceptable time to drag Reuenthal and Mittermeyer out.

“You guys want to go soon?” Yang asked. “We should get going so we can make the last train.”

“Mmm,” said Mittermeyer, which was probably a yes. Reuenthal wasn’t really paying attention to anything anymore.

“Great,” Yang said. “I’m gonna go outside and call a taxi.”

“Okay,” Mittermeyer said, then leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes.

Yang stood up, and then immediately realized that he needed to pee. Well, he would do that, and then he would call the taxi. He could still feel the alcohol inside of him, and he swayed a little on his walk through the house, trying to dodge the other guests in the dark room. There was the hallway, and he walked down it, trying to determine which of the closed doors was the bathroom. One had a sign taped on it that said “Bathroom”, written in marker in Magdalena’s handwriting, but when Yang tried the door, he found it locked. This was unfortunate. Yang theorized that in a house this large, there was definitely more than one bathroom. He saw the stairs a little down the hall, and decided he would try to find the upstairs bathroom.

The upstairs was dark and quiet. His steps made almost no sound on the carpeted floors, especially with the muted throbbing of the music from downstairs. He almost felt like he was trespassing, but his need to pee was so urgent that he pressed on regardless. He tried a few of the closed doors, found a linen closet, an empty bedroom, but no bathroom. He continued a little further down the hallway.

Yang tried the next door. When it swung open, he blinked in surprise, finding Magdalena and her friend-- the one she had introduced them to, the one who was betrothed to the prince, the one whose name Yang could not remember… He stood there for an instant, trying and failing to remember her name, before he realized that there was a larger problem here. Magdalena was on the bed, straddling the other girl’s waist, her hands tangled in her bright red hair. She turned immediately when she heard the door open, and she glared at Yang, who tried to back away and shut the door.

“Who is it?” Ingrid-- that was her name!-- asked, shoving Magdalena off of her and sitting up.

Magdalena scrambled off the bed and towards Yang. He tried to stumble backwards, but she grabbed his collar and pulled him forward into the room. He was waving his hands and trying to escape, but she didn’t let him go until they were inside with the door shut. Ingrid was staring at this with more confusion than fear, and more fear than hostility. Magdalena seemed fairly upset, though.

“What the hell are you doing here, Hank?”

“I was looking for your bathroom, can I please use your bathroom?”

“Gods above, Leigh,” Magdalena said. “Over there.” She pointed to a door in the corner of the room, then pushed Yang towards it. He practically ran, though inside it was just a ensuite bath with no alternate exits. At least it was a bathroom that he could use.

When he came out, Magdalena was sitting on the bed, facing the bathroom as though ready to put him on trial. Although she was fully dressed, Ingrid had the blankets of the bed pulled up around her.

“So, you were saying something about discretion earlier?” Magdalena asked, hands on her hips.

“Yeah,” Yang said.

“You’re not going to say anything to anyone, yes?”

“I won’t,” Yang said. “I promise.”

“Because I am fully capable of ruining your life completely, you understand?”

“You wouldn’t even have to work that hard,” Yang grumbled, then realized that he was being stupid. He flushed a little. This poor choice of words actually seemed to relax Magdalena, and some of the tension went out of her shoulders. Ingrid giggled a little, still clearly nervous and looking to Magdalena for reassurance and direction.

“Great. Glad we understand each other.”

“Can I go?” Yang asked. “Sorry, I want to call a taxi and go home.”

“Not enjoying my party, Hank?” Magdalena asked, with a slightly strange smile.

“You aren’t either, because you’ve abandoned it completely.”

“Nobody cares about that,” she said. “Fine. Go home. I’ll see you some other time.”

“Must you?”

“I thought we were friends,” Magdalena pouted.

“I have no idea what this is,” Yang said. “If this is how you make friends, I would hate to be your enemy.”

“Great.” She smirked a little. “Get out, then. And shut the door behind you.”

Yang shook his head and left, not needing any more encouragement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk if I'm completely satisfied with this chapter but it's here anyway haha
> 
> We're doing court drama now my friends. Ingrid is made up out of whole cloth, but Erwin Joseph has to have a mother somewhere, doesn't he? Wonder what could have /possibly/ happened to make Ludwig die an early death and there be "no strong maternal influence" on the boy? [eyes emoji]
> 
> My brain has been mush recently and for that I apologize. But hey, Yang getting chased by a flock of geese is pretty funny. I like setting up an intentional contrast between Yang and various other characters via their relationship to the natural world. Yang, who grew up on a spaceship, compares himself physically to Iserlohn fortress-- a manmade object. Every scene where he interacts with nature is kinda ???? at best. There's a deliberate contrast as well between Yang commenting many times how beautiful of a planet Odin is, vs the kind of post-industrial former mill town where Reinhard is sent to live in part 2. Reinhard also has a distinct relationship to nature (he feels at home in it, but also has a running theme of wanting to own and control its beauty, etc). Anyway, I'm rambling and not making a lot of sense here haha. But I'm trying to do something intentional with all of that. Ymmv if it's working or not.
> 
> Thanks to Lydia for the beta read. Original science fiction @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven , mystery story @bit.ly/arcadispark . I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter.


	7. Better to Face These Kinds of Things With a Sense of Poise and Rationality

_ September 480 IC, Odin _

When Yang had been working at the TA/PI unit for almost a year, he had developed a strict personal routine. It was not strict in the sense that it meant he lead a disciplined life, but it was strict in the sense that he rarely deviated from it. With all of his friends far afield, Mittermeyer having graduated from the IOA earlier in the summer, Yang was, for the most part, alone, and his habits kept him from falling completely into meaninglessness. On weekdays, he would wake up (usually a little too late), eat breakfast while he walked to work, spend his whole day working on whatever Bronner assigned him-- Yang suspected that he was getting some of the more challenging assignments that the unit had-- then leave promptly at the end of his shift. For a military posting, his job was quite regular, and well-suited enough to him that Yang found it easy, though he suspected that many of his coworkers were not so lucky. 

After work, he had personal projects to work on. Being right in the center of Odin, and working under Bronner, gave him access to archival material that he could have only dreamed of when he was first thinking about studying history. He spent most of his evenings in the Odin Imperial Library, or laying on the grass at a park near his house reading, or staying late at work to trawl the archives. He suspected that Bronner closely monitored what Yang was looking at in the archives, and Yang was certain that Bronner would eventually demand to read what he was writing, but since he wasn’t researching anything too “dangerous”, Yang felt safe enough. 

Yang had originally thought to focus his research on the very first years of the Empire, the rise to power of Rudolph the Great, but he had realized fairly early on that he couldn’t bear to write about Rudolph in the hagiographic tone that was expected of everyone who approached the subject. Yang found Rudolph von Goldenbaum disturbing, and didn’t trust himself to conceal that in what would, by necessity, a carefully crafted propaganda piece should he decide to write about him. So, instead, Yang turned his attention to targets who were far less immune to criticism. In the years directly following Rudolph’s death, there had been a great struggle for power within the Empire. The most powerful men in that time had fought among themselves to hold the Empire together, under their own banners and with their own plans for the future. Yang found himself fascinated by this menagerie of personalities and tactics, and he could be as brutal as he liked when he dismissed them with his pen. There was no great love within the Empire for most of the Kaisers of history-- once they died, there was a certain lifting of the curtain of silence allowed.

When he had worn himself out enough that he felt like going home, he would, and then he would avail himself of the dinner available at his boarding house. It was usually pretty good. And then he would read or write some more, usually letters to his friends, and then sleep.

Weekends were a little different, as he often went to visit the Mariendorfs, which was the high point of his week. Sometimes, Magdalena would call him up and ask him to accompany her somewhere, a task that continued to confuse him, but he usually said yes as he had little better to do with his time.

Yang was walking out of work one Tuesday, intending to go to the library, when his schedule was forcibly interrupted.

“Lieutenant von Leigh,” a familiar voice called to him as he walked through the ministry’s lobby. Yang turned and saw Commander Oberstein. He smiled at him and strode over, passing through pools of orange afternoon sunlight that dotted the marble floor of the lobby, swinging his bag at his side.

“Commander Oberstein, I’m glad to see you,” Yang said. 

Oberstein inclined his head. “Do you have some time, Lieutenant?”

“Of course, I was just heading out for the day. Want to get a drink?”

“If you like,” Oberstein said. “You asked me to meet up with you on Odin and I am here for the next few days on business, so I am making good on your request.”

Yang smiled. “I’m sure we have a lot to talk about.” He gestured to the door, and Oberstein followed him out into the warm September air outside. They walked a little ways to a bar that Yang preferred, which wasn’t really very full at the moment. They found a place in the corner and ordered drinks.

“How has life been on Iserlohn?” Yang asked, taking a sip of his beer.

“Much the same as it always is. I saw Rear Admiral Merkatz as I was leaving.”

“Did you?” Yang asked. “How is he?”

“I mentioned our mutual acquaintance, and he told me to say hello.”

Yang smiled a little. “Oh, I’m glad. Perhaps he’s gotten over his anger at me.”

“You could write to him and request to return to his fleet,” Oberstein suggested.

“No, I think I’m better off here for the moment,” Yang said. “You were right that this position would be one that I enjoyed. And I haven’t been here for even a year.”

Oberstein nodded. “When will you ask to be reassigned?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “I don’t think I do much good for anyone on the front.”

“But you do here?”

“I hope that I can.” Yang looked at Oberstein’s face for a second, considering. “Has there been any talk about changing the command structure on Iserlohn?” Yang asked.

“No. Why do you ask?”

Yang sighed a little. He reached into his bag and pulled out his computer, setting it on the table between them. “Can I show you something and get your opinion on it?”

“Of course,” Oberstein said.

Yang searched through his files for the proposal he had put together for Fleet Admiral Muckenburger months ago, and he turned it around to show Oberstein. “Here are several different scenarios in which I believe the rebel fleet could plausibly take Iserlohn. I believe the first scenario is not only plausible but likely.”

Oberstein silently read through the whole package as Yang drank his beer. When he had finished he looked up. “And your proposal to Fleet Admiral Muckenburger was to change the command structure of the fortress?”

“Unify command, at least,” Yang said. “Are you attached to the fortress, or to the fleet?”

“The fleet,” Oberstein said.

Yang frowned a little. “Dangerous.”

“I see that you think so.”

“These proposals weren’t distributed to command of the fortress, were they?”

“I have not seen this before, no.”

“Do you feel like these are reasonable scenarios?”

“They depend on the rebel fleet deciding to do something other than throw bodies at the corridor,” Oberstein said. “They have not yet learned that that is not a winning strategy.”

“I think their Admiral Sithole is a smarter man than that,” Yang said. “He used to be a teacher. I have great respect for teachers.”

“Indeed.” Oberstein took a drink from his beer before saying anything else. “I do think that you are correct to say that Iserlohn is capable of falling into the enemy’s hands, or at least of being destroyed. I do not know if I agree that these are the specific strategies that will be used.”

“Are you implying that I’m bad at my job, Commander?” Yang asked with a slight smile, clearly joking.

Oberstein wasn’t in the mood to joke. “No,” he said in his same flat voice. “I simply think that it is impossible to predict the future so cleanly as you are trying to do.”

Yang nodded. “That’s true.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I just-- an analysis of the past is the best predictor we have. And the past tells me that there’s no unsinkable ship, no unbreachable fortress, no eternal regime.”

Oberstein studied him for a second. “There is a first time for everything,” he said.

“You think the Goldenbaum dynasty will last to the end of humanity?” Yang asked.

“Dangerous talk, Lieutenant.”

“True.” He looked down at his computer, then shut it. “I’ll send you these proposals,” Yang said. “Maybe you can do some good with them. If Muckenburger doesn’t want to distribute them, maybe at least you, since you’re on Iserlohn…”

“You seem very invested.”

“I would prefer not to see you killed,” Yang said. “By the Thor Hammer or the rebel fleet’s guns.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why’?” Yang asked. “You’re my friend.”

“Then I will take those plans under consideration, as your friend,” Oberstein said.

Yang relaxed a little, relieved. “Thank you. I suppose you don’t have to believe that any of this will come true, but it will make me feel a little bit better to know that--” He cut himself off.

“Know what?”

“If you know what might happen, you can make plans,” Yang said. “Maybe ask to be reassigned within the fortress, rather than in the fleet.”

“Why should I do that?”

“If Iserlohn falls, the fleet will be in a worse state than the fortress itself is. The rebel fleet will probably take the base staff prisoner. You’d be far more likely to survive.”

Oberstein considered this. “You used your life as a tool, once,” he said. “There may be need for me to do the same thing.”

Yang began tearing up his napkin. “I know. But don’t get killed over something stupid, okay?”

“It surprises me that you have such care for my well being.”

Yang shook his head. “You’re someone I can talk to. I think we understand each other. Even if that’s the only reason why I should care, it’s enough of one. Besides, you’re not the only person on Iserlohn, or in the Iserlohn stationed fleet. If you having this information could do some good, I want you to have it.”

Oberstein nodded. “I will do my best with it.”

“Thank you, and I’m sorry for giving you this burden.”

“Don’t waste thoughts on that.”

“All right,” Yang said with a smile. 

* * *

_ March 481 IC, Odin _

Magdalena wanted to have lunch with him on Saturday. Yang had been planning on spending the day with the Mariendorfs, but Magdalena was insistent, so Yang postponed his visit and made his way to the Westpfale estate, wearing civilian clothing. One of the footmen led him into Magdalena’s drawing room, though she wasn’t there. Yang wandered over to the window while he waited for her, staring out at the carefully manicured lawn that had not yet come back to full green from the harshness of the winter, though all the snow was long gone. There were birds swooping and chasing each other in the sky just above a little copse of trees, and Yang watched them, trying to predict how they would move, as though they were ships on the battlefield. While he was watching this, Magdalena came up behind him.

“Enjoying the view, Hank?”

He jumped, startled. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I’m quiet like that,” she said, gesturing to the couches. “Did you want to take a seat, or were you planning to continue looking like you’re ready to jump out the window at any opportunity?”

Yang sat. Magdalena took the seat across from him, then picked up the little bell on the table and rang it. One of her servants came in, carrying a tray-- coffee for her, tea for Yang, and an assortment of little biscuits. “Thank you, Barton. And could you close the door on your way out?”

“Certainly, my lady,” the servant said, giving a slight bow and then exiting. Yang watched this without comment, feeling uncomfortable. 

When the door was shut, Magdalena leaned back on her couch, spreading her arms out across the top of it, and stared at Yang. He picked up his teacup and sipped it, not going to be the one to break the weird silence that lay between them.

“You’re coming with me to an event,” she said.

“What kind of event?” Yang asked, truly resigned. “You can’t just demand that I do things, you know.”

“I can’t?” she asked with a smile. Yang frowned. Magdalena reached behind the couch to a small table, from which she picked up an elaborate invitation. She held it out towards Yang, who reluctantly put down his teacup to take it.

“You’re going to that wedding?” Yang asked.

“Of course,” Magdalena said. “For one thing, Ingrid is my  _ bosom _ friend. For another, turning down an invite to the crown prince’s wedding is a ticket to social hell.”

Yang put the card down on the table. “I can understand that second reason,” he said. “But not the first.”

“You don’t understand being friends with someone?”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“There’s no one here,” she said. “You can speak freely.”

“Whenever someone says that, I get the distinct impression that I should start checking the room for hidden microphones, or making sure they’re not wearing a wire.”

Magdalena laughed. She playfully tugged on the neckline of her dress. “Shall I prove to you that I’m not?”

“I would prefer to just take you at your word, I suppose.” 

She grinned at him. “Well, what was it you don’t understand?”

“It seemed to me, and perhaps I was making a mistaken assumption, that you and Fraulein Roscher were more than just friends.”

“Well,” Magdalena said, waving her hand, “it’s not as though those two things are mutually exclusive.”

“You’re not unhappy that she’s getting married?”

“Why should I be unhappy?” Magdalena asked.

“Because then she’ll have a husband,” Yang said, not sure why he seemed to be having to explain the concept of marriage to Magdalena.

“It’s not like that will change anything.” She took a sip of her coffee. “It would be silly of me not to be glad that Ingrid will become the kaiserin one day.”

“And you think that nothing will change?”

“You seem awfully invested in the idea that I’d be upset,” Magdalena said. “Care to explain?”

Yang frowned, took a sip of his tea, and said nothing.

“Is mister tall, dark, and handsome whom you’re so attached to getting married?” Magdalena asked, raising an eyebrow.

“What? Reuenthal? No.”

“You say that like it’s beyond the realm of possibility.”

“He has a particular distrust for women,” Yang said. “And there’s no one around to tell him that he must get married, so I somehow doubt that he ever will.”

“I see. That didn’t answer my previous question, though. You really can speak freely with me.”

“It’s not really my business to say,” Yang said.

“Oh, the cute blond one, then. He’s getting married?”

“No,” Yang said, but there was so much less emphasis in that denial that Magdalena nodded. 

“And are you upset on your own behalf?”

“I’m not upset,” Yang said. He put down his teacup and stared out the window for a second. The birds were still darting around and chasing each other. “It’s not my business.”

“You keep saying that, but you don’t yourself believe it.”

“Look, just tell me why you’re not upset, and then I can decide how much of a problem it is going to be… in the future.”

She tilted her head to look at him. “Like I said, nothing has to change.” She shrugged a little. “It’s not as though we could be open about things before anyway. After… school… we could only see each other occasionally. That won’t be any different now.” There was a particular hesitation in the way that Magdalena spoke about school, and Yang had to wonder what the story was there.

“You’re not worried about it?”

“You’re going to have to be more clear about what aspects you think I should be worried about.”

“That…” There were several things he wanted to say. He tried to think about what Mittermeyer would be concerned about. “That it’s wrong to see her while she has a husband.”

“No,” Magdalena said flatly. “Not at all.”

“And you aren’t worried that she’ll stop loving you?”

“Who said anything about her loving me in the first place?” Magdalena asked. Although the answer was delivered in a rather accusatory tone, she did shift uncomfortably on the couch. Perhaps Yang had struck a nerve with that one.

“It seemed like you love--”

“Let’s not talk of love,” Magdalena said. “I find it tiresome.”

“Fine,” Yang said. He took another sip of his tea, finishing the cup and wishing he had more. “And you’re unconcerned about getting caught?”

“I’m capable of discretion as much as anyone else,” Magdalena said.

“Discretion isn’t the only thing in play here,” Yang said.

“Hank, I do not care,” she said.

“If they catch you, they’ll kill you.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Magdalena said. “It would be a scandal the likes of which hasn’t been seen for hundreds of years. I think there would be some value in covering it up.”

“And someday when I wake up and read the papers to discover that you’ve quietly committed suicide, I’ll be forced to wonder if that was the actual case, or--”

“You’re getting all worked up. It’s as though you actually care about me, or something,” Magdalena said. “How sweet of you.”

“I don’t know how you can be so nonchalant,” Yang said.

Magdalena smoothed out her dress on her lap. “What’s life without a little risk, Hank?” she asked.

“A good life, probably,” Yang said. “I personally would like to live one.”

She laughed a little. “You seem to be very bad at that.”

“Not my fault,” Yang said. “Things just happen to me.”

Magdalena twirled a piece of her hair. “If you say so.” There was a note in her voice that indicated she might want to return to that particular topic later. “Do you understand, at least, why I might not be so upset by Ingrid getting married?”

“Not really, no,” Yang said. “But I’ll just have to accept it, I suppose. Is Fraulein Roscher happy to be married?”

“There have been untold numbers of women who get married without feeling anything about it one way or another. Maybe that’s the difference between you and I,” Magdalena said. “You are upset because you feel like you have the luxury of choice. I am aware that Ingrid does not.”

Yang shrugged a little, then looked down at his empty teacup. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be,” Magdalena said. “It’s not a situation you caused, and it’s certainly not a situation you can solve.” She paused to eat a cookie from the tray, then. “You may be right that I’m not  _ pleased _ that Ingrid is getting married. I’m not  _ thrilled _ . It doesn’t warm the cockles of my heart. But I’m not going to waste time moping about it, and I’m going to go to her wedding, because I am her friend, and I care about her. And because it would be a social disaster not to.”

“And why do you want me to come with you?”

“Because it’s fun to bring you places,” Magdalena said. “You make my life  _ so _ much easier.”

“I truly do not understand how.”

“Hank, what is there not to understand? If I walk around with you on my arm, everyone will be so busy gossiping about how I couldn’t  _ possibly _ marry you that they won’t start insisting that I do marry you.”

“You want to marry me?” Yang asked. When he heard her mention getting married, his mind sort of blacked out and couldn’t focus on the actual content of her statements.

“No, you stupid, stupid man,” Magdalena said. “At least not unless it for some reason becomes very politically convenient, which I do not expect that it will.”

“Oh.”

“Look, Hank, you’re very cute, and you’re very sweet, and you’re very much a foreign looking nobody. It’s a perfect combination. It helps that you’re even pleasant to be around.”

“Thanks,” Yang muttered. His feelings towards Magdalena were completely unclear, even in his own head. “I was worried you actually liked me, or something.”

“Oh, I certainly  _ like _ you,” she said. “But there’s a world of difference between liking someone and being with someone, and a world of difference again between that and getting married to someone.” She looked out the window, then. “I suppose I’m lucky,” she said. “I said that Ingrid didn’t have the luxury of choice. I almost do, I think.”

“How?”

“I’m the baroness by birth,” she said. “This house, my family’s inheritance, it’s mine. I don’t have to rely on the charity of a husband. And if I do ever decide to get married, it will be even more dangerous for me, because that’s what he could be after.”

“So you have the luxury of marrying for love?”

“I said that we shouldn’t speak of love. It’s so tiresome.”

“Sorry.”

She smiled at him. “I can be a petulant creature. I apologize.”

“It’s fine,” Yang said. “I’ve gotten used to you.”

“Oh, we can’t be having that. I’ll have to do something to surprise you again.”

“Please, don’t,” Yang said. She laughed at his sudden alarm.

“So,” she said, “will you come?”

“I wasn’t aware that you were giving me a choice.”

“Don’t be silly. You could walk out on me at any time.”

“And then what would you do?”

“To you? Nothing. Probably laugh. I would just have to go through the trouble of finding someone else to go with instead.”

“If you really want me to come, I’ll come, but I really-- the reasons I’m convenient for you are the same reasons that I prefer not to see or be seen by the rest of the nobility.” He frowned slightly. “Fleet Admiral Muckenburger will be there, won’t he?”

“Probably,” Magdalena said. “Why does that matter?”

“He told me very explicitly to stay out of his sight.”

She laughed. “There will be a thousand people there, maybe more. I doubt you’ll make much of an impression.”

“I certainly hope not,” Yang said.

* * *

_ April 481 IC, Odin _

The wedding was taking place on the grounds of Neue Sanssouci, which already put a bad feeling in Yang’s stomach, but by the time that Magdalena came by his house to pick him up, he was trapped into going. When he got into the back of the car, Magdalena looked at him with a disgusted expression.

“What, exactly, did you do to your hair?” she asked, reaching towards his head. Yang ducked out of the way.

“I was trying to comb it back,” Yang said. “To look respectable.”

“You look like… I don’t even know. Come here, let me fix it.” Yang reluctantly scooted next to Magdalena as the car started moving, and she fished through her little handbag to find a brush, which she savagely attacked Yang’s hair with. “How men are allowed to dress themselves… I don’t even understand how the species survives,” she muttered. When she had finished, she showed Yang his reflection in the little pocket mirror she carried-- he had to admit that it was an improvement.

“Does the rest of my outfit meet your satisfaction, at least?”

“I think I would look better in that uniform than you do,” she said. “But since you’re required to wear it, it at least avoids whatever fashion disaster you might have come up with otherwise.”

“That’s the whole reason I joined the fleet,” Yang said unhappily. “To avoid dressing myself.”

“I see that we’re both in terrible moods,” she said, a false cheerfulness in her tone. She leaned on his shoulder. “You have to make sure that I’m well behaved.”

“I’m your chaperone now?”

“Don’t let me make a fool of myself.”

“I don’t know if I can stop you.”

“Hmm, probably not.” She took his hand and placed it on her lap, smoothing out his fingers like they were crumpled pieces of paper, then tracing over his palm with her own fingertips. It was a curiously intimate and tender thing or her to do, and it made Yang shiver. “You will try, though.”

“Yes, I’ll try,” he said. He looked down at her, and saw that she was staring out the car window, her expression more melancholy than he had ever seen it. Perhaps she was just looking for some reassurance. He closed his hand around her tracing fingers, and just held it for a while. She didn’t quite relax, but she nodded slightly, and kept her hand in his.

The day was a beautiful one for a wedding. Spring had come in full force, and the sky was an electrifying blue, with only the barest wisps of clouds to drift across it. The wedding was to be held outdoors, and the whole area was bedecked with flowers. Whenever a light gust of wind blew, it sent fragrant petals skittering through the air, though there were so many flowers that, no matter how many petals were lost, the whole setup looked completely undamaged. There was an absurd number of guests, and all were decked out in their own finery, trying to outdo the flowers. As much as it was a celebration of the couple in question, it was also an opportunity to see and be seen by everyone who mattered in the Empire. 

In the time before the ceremony began, Magdalena flitted around and talked to all of the other guests that she knew, always pointedly bringing Yang along and introducing him to everyone. Yang put up with the many, many unpleasant looks that he received with his usual absent smile, though he was keeping a mental tally in his head of exactly how much Magdalena owed him for this favor. At least she wasn’t making any major social errors, Yang thought, and neither was he, since he mostly stayed silent by her side. Still, it was a relief when the signal came that the ceremony was about to begin, and everyone took their seats. 

Yang and Magdalena were fairly close to the front, among the bride’s invited guests, a far smaller number than those invited by the groom (or perhaps the groom’s father, or whoever in the imperial employ who was responsible for figuring out the guest list for such an event). When the music swelled to signal the beginning of the event, Yang craned his neck to watch the bride and groom enter together. 

Ingrid was radiant in her white dress, voluminous to such an extent that the groom, Ludwig, had to stand a fair distance away from her. Her veil covered her red hair and floated behind her head when she moved, made of fabric so thin that gravity barely seemed to have a hold on it. She had the kind of vacant, calm expression on her face that Yang had noticed other women wearing sometimes-- it could have been a mask for anything. Her eyes stayed fixed ahead. 

Ludwig was taller than she was by almost half a foot, and he walked stiffly up the aisle, with a self-assured stride and jut of his chin. He was fine looking, Yang decided, but aside from being the heir to the imperial throne, Yang thought there was something wholly unpleasant about him. Perhaps it was the tone in which he spoke the vows: possessive, and not possessive in the way that Yang was used to people being when they were in love. Did Ludwig love Ingrid? It was hard to tell. That might not have even been a consideration for the couple, though, since the crown prince could reasonably be assumed to be able to marry whomever he wanted, it was strange to think that he might want to marry someone he did not love. 

Magdalena sat stiffly beside Yang for the whole thing, though when the vows were done and it was time for the couple to kiss, she abruptly reached over and grabbed Yang’s hand, her fingernails digging deeply into his skin. He tried not to wince too visibly.

Overall, it was a beautiful, if conservative, ceremony. There weren’t many tears shed, except by a woman who Yang presumed was Ingrid’s mother sitting two rows ahead of him, who spent a lot of the ceremony dabbing her face with a handkerchief. 

The reception dinner was not very far away, in one of the many large halls of Neue Sanssouci. Yang and Magdalena ended up seated at a table with guests that neither of them knew-- some of Ingrid’s cousins-- but Magdalena was able to get herself under control and charm them with her conversational skills enough to keep the dinner pleasant.

By the time the dinner was over, the sun had set, so the transition into the dancing part of the evening was signalled by the lighting of many twinkling lamps. Magdalena pulled Yang onto the dance floor.

“Are you going to behave?” Yang asked, only half joking.

“Of course,” she said. “But what’s the point of going to a wedding if you aren’t even going to dance?”

True to her word, Magdalena did not try to pull any strange stunts, and Yang had perhaps the first few incident-free dances of his life. He excused himself after a while to go get them both drinks.

While standing at the bar waiting for the bartender, Yang was startled when someone came up beside him who looked, aside from being about forty years older, exactly like Reuenthal. The man ignored Yang until Yang’s stare became too much to ignore.

“Can I help you, Lieutenant?” the man asked.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Yang said. “I just noticed that you look very much like a good friend of mine-- are you Count Marbach, by any chance?”

The man looked down his nose at Yang, and Yang tried not to shrink under the withering stare. “I am.”

“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Yang said and extended his hand.

The count considered him for a moment before deciding to shake Yang’s hand. “And now that you know who I am,” the count said, “may I know who I am speaking to?”

“Leigh,” Yang said. “Hank von Leigh. Your grandson, Oskar von Reuenthal--”

“Herr Reuenthal has made it clear that I was not to be involved in his son’s life,” the count said. “So to say that you are an acquaintance of my grandson means very little to me.”

“Oh.” Yang rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly embarrassed. He should really know better than to get involved in Reuenthal’s messy family life. “I’m sorry for interrupting you, then, sir.”

“No matter.” The count gathered his drink from the bartender, then nodded to Yang. “Goodnight, Lieutenant.”

Yang gathered up his own drinks and returned to Magdalena. As they stood on the edge of the dance floor, Yang looked around for the count, feeling quite discomfited by the whole interaction he had just had. The count was actually quite visible, because he stood near the Kaiser, despite everyone else at the party giving the Kaiser a wide berth. 

“Who are you staring at?” Magdalena asked, taking a sip from her drink. “Also, don’t let me drink any more after this. I cry too easily when I get drunk.”

“Okay,” Yang said absentmindedly. “That’s Count Marbach.” He nodded to where the count was.

“Yes, I’m aware,” Magdalena said. “I’ve met him.”

“What’s he doing with the Kaiser?”

“You didn’t know they were friends?” Magdalena asked. “My mother says they had quite the scandal in their youths.”

Yang raised an eyebrow.

“Not like that,” Magdalena clarified, waving her hand. “They just spent money far too widely.”

“I see,” Yang said. “The folly of youth, was it?”

“I suppose. Why did you care, anyway?”

“He’s Reuenthal’s grandfather.”

“Oh. I see the resemblance, I guess.”

They watched the count lean down to speak to the Kaiser. The Kaiser looked up and around the room, and Marbach pointed directly at Yang. Yang hurriedly made the decision to pretend not to be looking, but he didn’t think he was fast enough, and his eyes met the Kasier’s across the room for a fraction of a second. Yang looked down at the floor, took a sip of his drink, and wondered when Magdalena would let them both leave.

Despite not actually enjoying the party, Magdalena couldn’t bring herself to leave a party early, so they stayed for quite a while. At one point, Magdalena dragged Yang over to Princess Amarie and her husband, Duke Braunschweig, to say hello. Braunschweig looked at Yang with the same intense distaste that so many of the other guests also did. Yang smiled politely as Amarie and Magdalena greeted each other and made the required introduction of Yang to the duke.

“Is it a relief for you to know that your brother’s finally made a respectable man of himself?” Magdalena asked the princess, who laughed.

“I would be a poor older sister if I said yes. Ludwig has always been very respectable,” Amarie said. Yang couldn’t help but notice that Braunschweig seemed amused by that statement. Perhaps there was some Goldenbaum family gossip that Yang was not privy to.

“Oh, of course,” Magdalena said. “But it must take some of the pressure off of you and Princess Christine.”

Amarie waved her hand. “I hope my father has a long reign yet. He’s in good health, of course. And I hope that Ludwig has some time to settle into married life and enjoy himself without the full pressure of being kaiser.”

Magdalena nodded. “It’s a beautiful wedding.”

“Did you come to mine? I can’t remember.”

“No, only my parents went to yours. I believe they had both decided I was too young to actually enjoy it.”

“Oh, but did you go to Christine’s?”

“No-- you know my mother is only friends with you,” Magdalena said with a smile.

“That is because your mother has good taste.”

“I will have to tell her you said so.”

“Oh, she knows that’s my opinion,” Amarie said. “Are you planning to stay here long?”

“I would like to give the new Frau Goldenbaum my congratulations in person,” Magdalena said. “And then Hank and I will probably go.”

Amarie looked over at Yang like she was just now realizing he was there, though Magdalena had been holding onto his arm the entire time they had been speaking. “I heard my father talking about you,” the princess said.

“Er, good things, I hope,” Yang said. This was the last thing he wanted.

“Inconsequential things, I think. Just gossip about the Marbach family.”

“Hah, yes, I introduced myself to Count Marbach, which I suppose I shouldn’t have done. I’m good friends with his grandson, but I gather that he and the count are estranged.” He rubbed the back of his head.

“Perhaps my father taking an interest will ease some of that estrangement,” Amarie said. “You should speak with him.”

“Who, Count Marbach?”

“No, my father.”

“I couldn’t possibly--” Yang began, but Magdalena very obviously poked him in the side. Amarie and Braunschweig both saw this; Amarie smiled, Braunschweig’s eyebrows furrowed minutely. “Well, if you think I should.”

“I do,” Amarie said. 

“May I ask why you are so interested in Lieutenant von Leigh having your father’s favor, darling?” Braunschweig asked. His voice was neutral, but it was an obviously pointed question.

Amarie laid her hand on her husband’s arm in a conciliatory gesture. “The baroness is obviously quite attached to him,” she pointed out. “It would be an easier pill for society to swallow when they get married if the lieutenant had the kaiser’s favor.” She looked at Magdalena. “And not just society, your mother, as well.”

Yang laughed a little, very uncomfortable. The whole goal of this game was to avoid discussions of marriage. “Thank you for your concern,” he said.

“Do you really think this will be a suitable match?” Braunschweig asked.

“Certainly no one could gossip that Maggie is trying to marry her way up in the world,” Amarie said gently. “I’m not opposed to it.”

“You’re right that my mother would be opposed,” Magdalena said, cutting in. “And she is not easily swayed.”

“Would you like me to speak to her?” Amarie asked.

“No,” Magdalena said, a little too sharply. Amarie blinked in restrained surprise. “I don’t need anyone to bother themselves on my behalf. Besides, I’m too young to think about marrying.”

“No such thing,” Amarie said. “Aren’t you a year older than today’s bride?”

Magdalena smiled, a tense expression. “I suppose I am. But I’m not marrying a prince. I’m in no rush.”

“Don’t become an old maid,” Braunschweig said. “I don’t think it’s healthy.”

“It’s only fair of me to ask,” Magdalena began. Yang, sensing that she was about to make a horrible social misstep from the tone in her voice, squeezed her arm a little. She looked over at him, then stopped and heaved a sigh. “Well, nevermind.”

“What?” Braunschweig asked.

“I told Hank to make sure I was on my best behavior,” Magdalena said with a laugh. “He’s trying to do his job.”

“Now you’ve made me curious as to what you were going to say.”

“Well, is it better for me to be an old maid, or to marry someone wholly unsuitable?” Magdalena asked. Yang cringed, but Amarie laughed.

“It would be rude of me to say in front of the lieutenant that I could find you a suitable man, if you would like.”

“You know I have no interest in that. If I did, I would have taken you, or anyone else, up on that offer long ago,” Magdalena said.

“Your mother is right that you’re completely incorrigible.”

“Every morning I wake up with the intent to break her heart anew, and then every night I’m lulled to sleep by the sound of her tears,” Magdalena said dryly. “I am the worst daughter on the planet.”

Amarie laughed. “You are funny.”

“It’s the only reason anybody keeps me around.”

“Of course. Well, if you want to give your congratulations to Ludwig and his wife, you should probably catch them soon. I believe they will probably leave relatively quickly.”

Magdalena put a false smile on her face. “I’m sure. It was a pleasure seeing you again, Amarie, Duke.”

“Any time, Magdalena,” Amarie said.

Yang gave a short bow to the princess and duke, then Magdalena dragged him away. “Are you going to talk to the kaiser?”

“I don’t want to,” Yang said. “Look, he’s with Fleet Admiral Muckenburger now. The man who told me explicitly to stay away from him.”

“Amarie will be insulted if you don’t take her advice.”

“Do I need to worry about Princess Amarie being insulted?”

Magdalena gave him a look like it should have been obvious. “We can find Ingrid first, and then you can talk to His Majesty, and then we can leave.”

“Please,” Yang said.

It was unfortunate that Ingrid and Ludwig were seated quite near the kaiser, but, of course they would be. Magdalena pulled Yang over to them. Yang bowed and Magdalena curtsied to the prince. Ingrid, whose expression had been of polite conversational interest, brightened up significantly when Magdalena came over.

“Ludwig, you remember Baroness Westpfale,” Ingrid said, making the introductions. “And this is her, uh--”

“Accompaniment for the evening,” Magdalena supplied.

“Right, her accompaniment, Lieutenant Hank von Leigh.”

“Good evening, Baroness, Lieutenant,” Ludwig said, clearly very bored.

“I just wanted to come over and give my congratulations and best wishes for your future,” Magdalena said.

“Thank you, Maggie,” Ingrid said. “Has the party been up to your standards?”

“Of course, darling,” Magdalena said, which Yang thought was a little forward. “You know I could never compete with this level of decoration.”

Ingrid laughed. “Will you be staying much longer?”

“Oh, probably not too long. You have work in the morning, don’t you, Hank?”

“Er, yes,” Yang said.

“I understand,” Ingrid said. “Ludwig and I are probably going to head out soon, as well. Get a head start on our honeymoon.”

“Where did you say you were going?”

“We’ll be taking a trip to Phezzan, and then making some stops down in the tropics on Odin. A whirlwind tour.”

“How exciting,” Magdalena said. “You’ll have to tell me all about it when you get back.”

“Of course. I’ll invite you over and we can catch up.” Ingrid smiled a little.

“Hank, you’re from Phezzan. What should they do while they’re there?” Magdalena demanded.

“Er,” Yang said, rubbing the back of his head. “I didn’t ever really do any tourist things. Unless you like, uh, history museums, or libraries. Or art museums. My dad would take me to--”

“Oh, nevermind,” Magdalena said, gently swatting his arm.

“I’m sure we’ll find plenty to amuse ourselves with,” Ludwig said, still that same bored tone in his voice. 

“I’m sure,” Magdalena said, an edge in her tone that caused Yang to stiffen slightly. Only Ingrid seemed to catch it, though, and she tilted her head, causing some of her red curls to fall into her face. Her elaborate hairstyle had been slowly deflating all day. She put her hand on Ludwig’s arm. 

“Sweetheart, would you mind terribly if I had a little dance with Maggie? We used to do ballet together, at school.”

Ludwig waved his hand, and Ingrid smiled and got up. Magdalena offered her her hand. “Oh, how forward of you, darling,” Magdalena said. Ingrid laughed a little. 

Yang wasn’t sure what to do, but he knew he didn’t want to stand next to Prince Ludwig, so he followed them towards the dance floor a little ways, then just stood watching Magdalena and Ingrid dance. The song was a fast one, and no one seemed to care that the two of them were holding hands and stepping lightly together, with Magdalena occasionally twirling Ingrid around underneath her arm. They kept their bodies carefully separate, but they were allowed the casual intimacy of schoolgirls, Yang thought. Ingrid was laughing. At one point, Magdalena leaned forward to whisper something into Ingrid’s ear, which only caused her to laugh harder, though Magdalena’s smile was a melancholy one.

Yang felt something approaching melancholy, as well. He simultaneously felt bad for and jealous of Magdalena, and he couldn’t help but think back to the night he and Reuenthal had gone to Count Mariendorf’s new year’s party, and he had stood on the sidelines and watched Reuenthal dance. Yang didn’t even like dancing, but he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to dance with Reuenthal-- or even to get to see Reuenthal dance with Mittermeyer, if he was carefully keeping his thoughts away from his own personal desires.

The music changed to something slower. Magdalena still had Ingrid’s hands in hers, and she tried to keep dancing, but Ingrid shook her head slightly and pulled away. There was a moment of tension between them, then Magdalena’s face fell, and she let go of Ingrid’s hands. Ingrid smiled a little, face wan, now, and walked off the dance floor and back towards her new husband. As she passed Yang, she nodded at him, which Yang didn’t know how to interpret. He nodded back, hoping that was what she wanted.

Magdalena stood on the dance floor by herself for a moment, looking rather lost, then pushed her way towards the edge of the room, towards the exit, away from Yang. It was perhaps time to start taking his “make sure Magdalena doesn’t do anything she would regret” duty seriously, so he followed her out, fairly far behind. They ended up in one of the hallways of Neue Sanssouci, and Magdalena didn’t seem aware that she was being followed. She speed-walked down the hallway. Yang had no idea where she was going, and after they made a couple turns he realized he had lost all sense of how to get back to the party, so he had no choice but to continue.

Magdalena turned a corner and he lost sight of her momentarily, though he heard a door open and shut. When Yang turned the corner, he discovered that there was only one door that she could have gone through. He hesitated a for about twenty seconds before opening it, reaching towards the knob and then deciding not to. Eventually, though, he steeled himself and pulled it open.

Like all the rooms in Neue Sanssouci, this one was well kept, but it was obviously some kind of room intended for use by the staff-- a break room, perhaps. It had a couch and a table and fridge and sink. Magdalena was sitting on the couch, well, laying dramatically, draped sideways with her head on her arm, sobbing. Yang shut the door behind himself when he came in. For a second, he just stood there, unsure of what to do, but then he sat down next to her. She knew it was him without even looking up.

“You should be talking to the Kaiser,” she said, somehow managing to sound admonishing even through her voice thick with tears.

“I decided to make sure you weren’t running around causing trouble,” Yang said.

“I’m not causing trouble,” she said. “You can leave.” She didn’t lift her head off of her arm. Hesitantly, Yang patted her shoulder. “I don’t need you to stay here and watch me cry. I told you I cry too much when I’m drunk.” This all was delivered through a dramatic chorus of sniffles. Yang had to admire Magdalena’s dedication to her persona, even though her tears were clearly genuine.

“You’re not drunk,” Yang pointed out, gently rubbing her shoulder. He was beginning to wish that he was.

“Let me have my excuses!” 

Yang didn’t try to say anything to her after that, and eventually she calmed down, and he handed her some paper towels from the sink to dry her eyes off with. Her makeup had smeared all over her face, and she half-laughed at herself. “I left my bag in the hall, now I have to go back out there looking like some kind of beast.”

“You look fine,” Yang reassured her as she rinsed her face off in the sink and patted it dry. Her eyes were still red from crying, but she was mostly recovered.

“I suppose I should get my bag and not just abandon it,” she said. “And you should talk to the Kaiser.”

“Do I have to?”

“Amarie will be unhappy if you don’t.”

Yang sighed but relented, and they walked back to the dance hall. “How do you know your way around the palace so well, by the way?” Yang asked, attempting to make distracting conversation.

“I used to come here all the time as a kid, with my father,” Magdalena said. “The staff would play with me. Or keep me out of trouble, anyway.”

“Must have been a full time job.”

She laughed a little. “Unfortunately, it seems to be a job that you now have.”

“I’m tempted to quit.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Yang shook his head. “Everyone around me is doing their best to prevent me from being my true self.”

“And what is your true self?”

“A deeply, deeply lazy man,” Yang said. 

They made their way back into the dance hall. There were fewer people around now, as the couple of honor had left, and so everyone was free to begin leaving at their leisure. The Kaiser was still around, though, speaking with his two daughters. Yang hovered at Magdalena’s side while she retrieved her purse, and they watched as Princesses Amarie and Christine had some kind of argument, which ended in Christine making a face and going to find her own husband.

Rather unexpectedly, a nine or ten year old girl ran up to Yang and Magdalena. Magdalena smiled at the girl and curtsied. “Hello there, Fraulein Elizabeth.”

“Hi Maggie,” the girl said. Yang did the mental math and realized that this must be the daughter of Princess Amarie and Duke Braunschweig. Elizabeth turned towards Yang. “My mother told me to find you.”

Yang rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, I know. I’m coming.”

Elizabeth nodded solemnly. Magdalena shooed Yang forward, apparently considering herself not invited to the meeting with the Kaiser.

Yang’s heart was in his throat as he approached where the Kaiser was sitting with his daughter, but his one consolation was that Fleet Admiral Muckenburger was nowhere in sight. Yang bowed when he got close.

“Mama, I found him for you,” Elizabeth said, then yawned. Yank had to sympathize with that: this wedding party was dragging on, and it was late for a ten year old to be up.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Amarie said. She turned to Yang. “I thought you might have left the party without fulfilling your promise to me.”

“No, sorry for disappearing. The baroness just needed some fresh air, so I accompanied her out for a minute.”

“Of course,” Amarie said. She turned to her father. “I told you, Lieutenant von Leigh is quite gracious to Baroness Westpfale.”

“Is he?” the Kaiser asked. He looked Yang over. “Take a seat, if you like, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Yang said, and hastily sat down next to Amarie, who he at least somewhat trusted to guide him through this social encounter.

“I’ve been hearing your name quite a lot, recently,” the Kaiser said. “First Muckenburger tells me you have some sort of idea about Iserlohn, then Count Marbach insists you’re meddling in his family matters, and now my daughter thinks you want to marry the baroness. It seems strange to me that one lieutenant could have gotten everyone so worked up.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I have not been intending to cause a fuss.”

“And yet, it seems that you do quite often. Do you intend to marry Baroness Westpfale?”

“I think in a situation like this, the Baroness would be the one to decide if she would like to marry me,” Yang said, rather dryly. “And I think that even if she did, she would take a good long time to think about it.”

“Hmm,” the Kaiser said. “And were you meddling in Count Marbach’s affairs?”

“I mentioned that I knew his grandson,” Yang said. “I didn’t realize that he was so estranged as to consider that meddling. I apologize, sir.”

“It’s not me to whom you should apologize.” The Kaiser took a sip of his wine, then glanced out over the party. “I once made the same mistake, you know.”

“In what way, Your Majesty?”

“Several years ago, I mentioned that I had seen his grandson when he came on that school trip. I believe it was the year you needed to avail yourself of my doctor.”

“Oh, yes, thank you again, Your Majesty.”

The Kaiser waved his hand. “I congratulated him on his grandson being successful at school, and he told me that they had never spoken. Some sort of falling out with the boy’s father. Do you know anything about that?”

“My friend Reuenthal is very private,” Yang said. He wasn’t sure if he should meddle. “He isn’t close with his father anymore, though I don’t know the history of his maternal relationships.”

“I see,” the Kaiser said. “Perhaps I should tell Willhelm to speak with him. Would your friend like that?”

“I honestly couldn’t say, sir,” Yang said. “But on his behalf, I’m honored that you would take an interest in his well being.”

“I think from being surrounded by the ladies of the court for so many years, I’ve learned to enjoy interfering in other people’s lives. It’s the only joy some women have, you know.”

“I see, Your Majesty.” He didn’t see, and he wished he could escape this conversation.

“And as for Fleet Admiral Muckenburger,” the Kaiser said, “he seems to think that your proposal is not without merit.”

“May I ask if you’re considering it, sir?”

“Oh, I leave all such matters up to people who are better equipped to deal with them than I. You would have to ask him.”

“Fleet Admiral Muckenburger told me very firmly not to bother him,” Yang said, which made the Kaiser chuckle. He seemed to be in a good mood. Perhaps he was slightly drunk-- usually Yang didn’t think he talked so much. 

“He thinks you’re a foreign element,” the Kaiser said. “Is that the case Lieutenant?”

“Your Majesty, I am the loyal servant of all the citizens of the Empire,” Yang said.

“How grandiose of you,” Amarie said. 

“A fair answer,” the Kaiser said. “Though it would be strange for me to expect another. I shall have to reassure Muckenburger that you are acting in loyalty and good faith.” He chuckled to himself a little bit, although nothing he had said was particularly funny. “It would be amusing if you weren’t.”

“Sir?”

“I’m just entertained to think of someone with poor motives being a guest at my son’s wedding. I’m grateful to learn that you’re not an assassin, or we would have had quite some trouble.”

Yang blanched. “No, sir.”

“Of course not.” He chuckled again. “It was a pleasure to speak to you again, Lieutenant. If I keep hearing your name, I’m certain I will see you again.”

That was a dismissal. Yang stood and bowed. “If it pleases Your Majesty, then I’m sure we will. Goodnight, Princess.”

“Goodnight, Lieutenant. Please give Baroness Westpfale my regards.”

Yang nodded and walked off, feeling like his heart was going to beat its way out of his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I chime in with a "haven't you people ever heard of closing the god damn door?" Or really, locking it as the case may be :p sending you all directly back to the mid 2000s, want it or not lmao. Anyway it seemed appropriate for this chapter in particular.
> 
> I think it's kinda fun to have this complicated web of character relationships, where we don't always or ever see the whole picture. Like what happened between Magdalena and Benemunde and Ingrid while they were at school? What did Magdalena say to Ingrid while they were dancing? How does Ingrid even feel about all of this? We don't know, because we have such a limited point of view into this world-- one that Yang feels like a complete outsider in. Is that me playing with some of our running themes, or is that me being lazy? That's for you to decide :^)
> 
> This is a depressing wedding for pretty much all involved. Is the court drama nonsense fun for you all? I don't know haha. My natural state is to convolute things very severely, so court drama always feels like it could get more twisty. 
> 
> Princess Amarie is trying to be a straight ally. By that I mean an ally to people she thinks are straight. She's like "aww isn't it sweet that maybe Magdalena has found some sort of star crossed lover. how romantic." lmao. Magdalena your plan has backfired. But whatever.
> 
> Yang and Magdalena are disaster bisexual solidarity lmao.
> 
> Thank you to Lydia for the beta read <3 . Original court drama @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven the nonexistent summer of 2020 @ bit.ly/arcadispark. I'm @natsinator on twitter and @javert on tumblr. see you all later!


	8. In the Blood of Eden

_ May 481 IC, Odin _

“You owe me for dragging me to Prince Ludwig’s wedding,” Yang said. “The least you can do is pay back the favor by accompanying me to one brunch.” He was sitting in his bedroom, with his phone on speakerphone on the windowsill of the open window beside him, watching squirrels squabble over something in the garden below. The sun was on its way down, and the clouds were rosy.

“I said that I would be happy to have brunch with you and your friends if and only if I was allowed to host it,” Magdalena said, her voice crackling out through his phone speaker. “I don’t know why you won’t let me. You know I’m a charming hostess.”

“Because I can’t just accept Mittermeyer’s invitation and demand that he change the venue.”

“Sure you can.”

“I’m not rude like you are.”

“Darling, I’ve never been rude in my life.”

“Come on,” Yang said. “Please?”

“Why do you even want me to accompany you?”

Yang sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“Well, explain it so I know at least what I’m getting into.”

“Evangeline was actually the one who invited me,” Yang said. “And I don’t want--”

“You’d rather this be a double date than a third wheel?”

“Number one,” Yang said, “we are not dating. Number two-- I don’t even know what Mittermeyer and Evangeline are.”

“Okay…” Magdalena trailed off. Yang could just picture her making a face and twiddling with her hair.

“I don’t want to be rude to her if Mittermeyer and I talk about work, and I don’t want to put my foot in my mouth while trying to figure out what is going on with the two of them.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?”

“Because he looks like a kicked puppy every time I bring his personal business up,” Yang said.

“So you think it will be less awkward to… what? Does she  _ know _ , this Evangeline?”

“I highly doubt it,” Yang said.

“Real can of worms you have there.”

“I know. That’s why I’m trying to borrow your social graces.”

“You really must have a paltry selection of options if I’m the one you’re going to for help with social graces. All I know how to do is make more trouble for everyone.”

“The only other woman I know is Hildegarde Mariendorf,” Yang said flatly. “And since she’s a child, I think your social graces will have to do.”

“That’s very sad for you,” Magdalena said, not sounding sad in the least. “Are you not at all worried about the class issue?”

“You’re the one who’s unhappy about going out to eat at a restaurant like some sort of commoner,” Yang pointed out.

“Darling, if I was prejudiced against commoners, it would be difficult for us to be friends.”

“What, you don’t think the ‘von’ in my name means anything?”

Magdalena snorted with laughter. “You kill me.”

“Mittermeyer I don’t think will care that much-- he’s met you and knows you’re my friend. Evangeline… Well, she’s a sweet woman.” Yang shrugged, though Magdalena couldn’t see it over the phone. “You don’t have to make a big deal out of it.”

“Now, that truly would be classless of me,” she said. “‘Make a big deal out of it’-- what kind of a boor do you take me to be?”

“Are you coming or are you not coming?” Yang asked.

“I’ll come,” Magdalena said. “But I’m only agreeing because I’m in a good mood right now.”

“Oh? What’s got you so happy?”

“Frau Goldenbaum shall be attending the ballet with me tomorrow night, with dinner at my house afterwards.”

“And Prince Ludwig?”

“Hates the ballet,” Magdalena said, sounding quite pleased. “He has respectfully declined my invitation, even though I so generously offered.”

“Did you pick that specifically because he hates it?”

“Well, the man hates all the fine things in this life. I could hardly invite him to something without him refusing. Unless it was some sort of horrible thing that men get up to in their spare time.”

“Such as?”

“I gather he likes to watch duels.”

“Thrilling.”

“You sound as unenthusiastic about dueling as Prince Ludwig does about the ballet.”

“Did I ever tell you that I gave Reuenthal a dueling sword for his birthday once?”

Magdalena laughed. “Did you indeed?”

“It was a self-serving gift,” Yang said, mostly joking. “I had spent the semester having nightmares that someone would challenge me to a duel, and I would simply be killed immediately. I had to give Reuenthal the means with which to step in and defend my honor.”

Magdalena was continuing to laugh. “And this wasn’t just because you thought he would look dashing with a sword.”

“Well, that’s-- not a fair thing to say. Anyway, I think he liked the gift. Hung it above his bed for a while.”

“A man who hangs a sword above his bed has something deeply wrong with him. Liable to fall down and stab him in his sleep.”

“Yeah…”

“So, you’re unenthusiastic about duels?”

“It’s hard to like bloodsports,” Yang said.

“And yet you’re a soldier.”

Yang sighed. “I am.” He tried to change the topic. “You’ll be careful, right?”

“It’s like you care, or something.”

“Forgive me for doing so,” Yang said sarcastically.

“Yes, mother, I’ll be careful. You’re really one to talk.”

“Speaking of mothers, where will your mother be during all of this?”

“I haven’t thought of a way to get rid of her yet.” Magdalena sighed dramatically. “Maybe we should get married, just so I have an excuse to move her into a different house.”

“I hope you’re joking.”

“Mmmm,” Magdalena said, which was meaningless. “Maybe I can convince her to go bother Count Mariendorf tomorrow.”

“Please don’t drag the count into your nonsense.”

“My mother likes him,” Magdalena pointed out. “Well, I’ll think of something. It’s none of your business, anyway.”

“Fine, fine,” Yang said. “I’ll leave you to your scheming. Sunday brunch, then?”

“I’ll come by and pick you up,” Magdalena agreed.

* * *

Yang and Magdalena met Evangeline and Mittermeyer at a restaurant in the center of the capital. Yang was wearing civilian clothes that Magdalena had deemed “fine”-- a casual but nice blouse and blue vest, and Magdalena was wearing a charming sundress and flower-bedecked hat. Mittermeyer was dressed similarly to Yang, and Evangeline looked like she was wearing her best dress-- one that was probably a little too warm for the weather.

Mittermeyer helpfully made the introductions of the two women to each other. Evangeline seemed a little overwhelmed by Magdalena, and Yang wasn’t sure if it was because Mittermeyer had introduced her as “the Baroness Magdalena von Westpfale”, or the way that Magdalena had, when offered Evangeline’s hand to shake, grasped it with both hands and held it for what felt like Yang to be an uncomfortably long time.

“You are a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” Magdalena asked. “I’m charmed to meet you.”

“Thank you, Baroness,” Evangeline said.

“Oh, please, call me Maggie. All of my friends do.”

Evangeline smiled shyly at that. 

They all sat down at an outdoor table, underneath a canopy of leaves and ordered some brunch. “How have you enjoyed your leave, Mittermeyer?” Yang asked.

“It’s been good,” Mittermeyer said. “I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time in the capital with you.”

“What would you have done if you had?” Yang asked. “Lurked in my apartment for a few weeks?”

“Should have made him pay rent,” Magdalena said. 

“There’s unfortunately not that much reason for me to spend time in the city when I’m on my vacation. And my mother would have been unhappy if I had tried to find one.”

“How is your mother?” Yang asked.

“She’s well. She’s glad to hear that you’re enjoying your posting.”

“Oh? I wasn’t sure that she liked me.”

“I think you made a decent impression when you were our houseguest.”

“Hank being a charming houseguest, now that I’d like to see,” Magdalena said, laying her hand on his arm.

Mittermeyer laughed a little. “You just have to invite him to a party where he knows people, so there’s less of a reason for him to stand in the corner by himself.”

“It’s not so much the standing around that’s the trouble with Hank,” Magdalena said, leaning towards Evangeline rather conspiratorially. “It’s the wandering around and getting himself into trouble that’s the problem.”

Evangeline giggled a little. “Herr von Leigh was the perfect guest when he stayed with us,” Evangeline said. “He complimented Frau Mittermeyer’s cooking enough to soothe her, he learned to ice skate to amuse us, and he offered me some advice that has greatly improved my life.”

“Us?” Magdalena asked.

“Evangeline lives with my family,” Mittermeyer clarified.

“Then I am  _ shocked _ that during his stay Hank did not open a door that he shouldn’t. He seems to find whatever untoward thing is happening at any given location.”

Mittermeyer coughed into his coffee. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

“There’s nothing--” Evangeline protested.

Yang wanted to bury his head in his hands. “It’s unfortunate that both of you are thinking of  _ different _ incidents,” Yang said. “And I had hoped that Baroness Westpfale would be on good social behavior today, and would refrain from making wild insinuations about you and Mittermeyer.”

Evangeline smiled at him. “It’s fine,” she said.

“So there’s no truth to the idea that a handsome young man and a beautiful young woman might have some sort of relationship between them?”

Mittermeyer frowned at Yang, who made a face at Magdalena, trying to get her to cool down.

“Evangeline is my third cousin and my friend,” Mittermeyer said.

“Once removed, actually,” Evangeline added, though she seemed unhappy, slightly, and looked down at the table.

“That’s a perfectly distant relation,” Magdalena said. “My mother would be thrilled if I decided I wished to marry my third cousin once removed. Unfortunately, he’s a fantastically ugly and unpleasant man.”

“The standards are somewhat different for nobility, are they not?” Mittermeyer asked.

Magdalena laughed. “Hank, you told me that no one would mind the circumstances of my birth. Well, it’s no matter. If the common people wish to hold themselves above the nobility on this one matter, that is their right. Certainly they have few enough of them.”

“I was under the impression that you would be on your best behavior,” Yang said. “Not purposefully going around offending my friends.”

“I was in a far better mood when I promised you that,” Magdalena said.

“I can tell.” Yang looked over at her, saw her fiddling with the spoon in her coffee, twirling it underneath her finger in a way that belied agitation that her voice didn’t.

Mittermeyer looked at Yang with a kind of exasperation. “You haven’t offended me,” he said.

“Thank you for forgiving my poor social graces,” Magdalena said. She turned slightly towards Evangeline. “Now, Evangeline, you were saying something about Hank giving good advice?”

Evangeline flushed slightly. “I was a very stupid girl several years ago,” she said. “I had some unrealistic expectations about how I should behave. Herr von Leigh was kind enough to correct me.”

“How thrillingly vague,” Magdalena said. “But I suppose it would be rude of me to press you, as my new friend. What do you do with your time, Evangeline?”

“I’m in school,” Evangeline said.

“Oh?” Magdalena leaned forward. “You’re too old for high school, though.”

“No, I’m studying design at Veltheim College,” Evangeline said. “I have a scholarship.”

“I’m jealous,” Magdalena said.

Evangeline tilted her head, perhaps noticing for the first time that she and Magdalena were fairly close in age. “Do you not go to school?”

Magdalena laughed. “Not anymore.”

“But you want to?”

“Well, I have no idea what I want. But my mother and everyone else will tell you that I was an unholy terror at my finishing school. My mother would keel over if I tried to attend a women’s college.”

Yang glanced sideways at her, some suspicions about Magdalena’s schooling finding their way into his thoughts. “Do you have any plans for after you graduate?” Yang asked.

Evangeline looked over at Mittermeyer, who didn’t seem to notice. “I’m hoping to find a position in a publishing house,” Evangeline said. “It might be nice to move to the capital. I’m sure your mother will be glad to see me gone.”

“No, she likes you a lot,” Mittermeyer said, rather distracted. “She’d keep you around forever, if she could.”

Magdalena smiled a little. “How did you come to be living with Wolf’s family?”

“My father died, and he had always been close with Wolf’s mother, so she offered to take me in,” Evangeline said. “I’m very grateful for that. For many reasons.”

“I see,” Magdalena said with a smile. “Certainly a far better fate than being all alone in the world like Hank here.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Yang muttered, taking a sip of his tea.

“He thinks he has need for neither family nor love,” Magdalena said. “How sad for him.”

“I’m sorry, will you excuse me for a second?” Mittermeyer asked, sounding a little strangled.

“Of course, Wolf,” Evangeline said with a concerned smile. Mittermeyer stood and nodded, heading into the restaurant, presumably to use the bathroom.

“I believe mother nature is calling me as well,” Magdalena said, turning to Evangeline. “Hank will be perfectly happy to entertain you for a moment, won’t he?”

Yang looked over at her, narrowing his eyes. The tone in her voice indicated that she had more in mind than just going to the bathroom, but he couldn’t say that in front of Evangeline, who was the only person at this table missing all of the context.

“Your breakfast will get cold,” Yang said.

“Such is life,” Magdalena replied. She took her hat off and left it on her chair when she stood. “I’ll be right back.” She twiddled her fingers in a jaunty wave back at Yang and Evangeline as she also vanished inside the restaurant.

There was a very awkward silence that descended between the two of them for a moment. “I’m sorry about all of this,” Yang said. “I really shouldn’t have invited her.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Evangeline said. “I think she’s fun.”

“She is usually in a better mood. I don’t know what’s gotten into her.” He took a sip of his tea and watched a fat bumblebee land on Magdalena’s hat, trying to pollinate the flowers on it. “I’ll ask her later.”

“Does she know Wolf?”

“I dragged him to her birthday party last year,” Yang said. “That’s the only time they met.” He shook his head slightly. “She’s just too invested in the business of people who don’t concern her.”

“There isn’t really any business to be invested in,” Evangeline said, sounding rather wistful.

“I’m not sure--”

Evangeline shook her head. “Really, there’s nothing going on between Wolf and I. We’re just friends and cousins.” Yang couldn’t help but react to that, though he wasn’t sure exactly what expression ended up on his face. “You thought that there was?”

“I don’t know what I thought,” Yang said. “Mittermeyer…”

“Does he talk about me?”

Yang rubbed the back of his head. “Fraulein--”

“Please, just call me Eva,” she said. “We’ve known each other for years. You don’t need to be formal with me.”

“Eva, I…”

“What does he say about me?”

“It’s not my business,” Yang finally got out. “I think… He likes you a lot. But he has a lot of other concerns.”

“Such as what?” Evangeline asked.

“Part of it is being in the fleet,” Yang said. “It’s hard to have a life on Odin when you’re stationed at a starship construction facility in the frontier.”

“That won’t be forever.”

“That’s true,” Yang said.

“But that’s only part of his concerns?”

“Mittermeyer wants to do right by everyone in his life,” Yang said. “I think it’s hard for him to figure out what that looks like.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

Yang was stiff. “I don’t know. That’s just an impression that I get,” he lied. “Maybe-- he’s a good man. An honest man. Maybe he thinks that saying anything to you while you’re still spending time under his family’s roof is inappropriate.”

She nodded. “Is there something else?”

“And maybe he doesn’t feel ready to, I don’t know, settle down.”

“Does he have other women?”

“No,” Yang said. “I don’t think… Well, it’s not my business. I shouldn’t be saying anything about Mittermeyer’s personal life.”

She smiled a little. “You are a good friend to him.”

“No, I’m not,” Yang said. “You probably shouldn’t have invited me here today.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s complicated,” Yang said. “If you tell Mittermeyer that I’ve been giving you advice, he’ll probably think that I’m doing it for selfish reasons.”

“I have no idea what you mean by that.”

Yang shook his head. “I can’t really explain it. I wish I could. It’s… Old school problems.”

She laughed a little. “I see. Are you giving me advice for selfish reasons?”

“I want Mittermeyer to be happy. More than anything else,” Yang said. “But he’s the only one who knows what that looks like. And as for you…” He shrugged. “Are you happy hanging onto his coat tails for years?”

“I don’t have much else going on in my life,” Evangeline said. She didn’t sound very distressed about this. “He was by far the nicest man in our hometown, and I go to a women’s college. There are not many opportunities to meet other men who would catch my eye.”

“If you say so.”

“You must think I’m still some kind of lovelorn teenager.”

“I never thought that about you.”

“No?”

“I think you’re more pragmatic than you give yourself credit for.”

She laughed a little. “Is that a quality you admire?”

“I suppose it is.”

“Should I make a move, then, if he’s unwilling to?” Evangeline asked.

“No!” Yang said, a little too emphatically.

Evangeline leaned back. “It’s not illegal for women to take an active interest in men.”

“You’ll scare him, if you do. That’s all I mean.”

“I didn’t think that Wolf would be scared of a woman breaking some of the usual social rules.”

“Not like that,” Yang said. He sighed a little. “You’ll either have to be patient and let him take his time, or you’ll have to give up on him. Those are really your two choices. I think he’d grow cold to you if you didn’t give him plenty of time to think about what he wants.”

“How long is he going to take, thinking about that?”

Yang frowned. “I think that everyone who knows him is asking that same question. Probably at least until his current tour of duty is up.”

“Years, then?”

“You don’t have to wait.”

“I can, for now,” Evangeline said. “Maybe when I become an independent woman after school, I’ll feel differently, but for now…” She shrugged and smiled. “Self-serving advice, was it?”

“Sorry,” Yang mumbled. He filled his mouth with pancakes so that he wouldn’t have to say anything else for a moment.

“You seem to be giving contradictory advice. On one hand you’re telling me that he likes me, on the other you’re telling me not to stick around. Which is it?”

Yang shrugged, feeling miserable. “I’m trying to give advice that won’t lead to anyone getting their heart broken.”

“Wolfgang isn’t so cruel as to do that.”

“I know he doesn’t want to be, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.”

“Is it?”

“He might end up hurting himself more than you,” Yang said, thinking about Reuenthal. 

“You have a dim view of the situation.”

“I can’t help it.”

She laughed a little bit. “I appreciate your advice, even if it is self-serving in a way that I can’t figure out. Should I ask him, if you won’t tell me?”

“You’d only upset him.”

“Hm.” She took a sip of her own coffee. “I can’t pretend I understand what the problem is. From my perspective, Wolfgang is a good man who likes my company, and I like his. There aren’t any reasons for us not to be together, and yet he won’t do anything, and you’re here talking about him managing to break his own heart. Please pardon me if I’m saying something untrue, here, but Wolf is an uncomplicated man in most other respects.”

“Eva…”

“What?”

Yang shook his head. “I guess I have some insight into that. I think Mittermeyer values the fact that you think of him as an uncomplicated man, and I think that he wants to truly be as uncomplicated as you think him to be.”

She studied him closely. “I can’t see what the complications are.”

Yang looked away. The bee that had been on Magdalena’s abandoned hat was now flying dangerously close to his head, and he stilled, hoping it would go away. The buzzing in his ear distracted him.

“I keep saying it’s not my business to divulge Mittermeyer’s thoughts, and yet I keep saying things,” Yang said.

“Do you think he’ll tell me himself what the problem is?”

Yang closed his eyes. He could imagine a situation in which Mittermeyer would, but he didn’t think it would be a happy one. He could picture Mittermeyer’s honest gesticulations and his tears, and what he would be admitting to Evangeline, but he couldn’t picture how Evangeline herself would react. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “You shouldn’t ask me for advice. I’m very bad at giving it.”

“I don’t think so. I think you’re very helpful. You’re the only one who’s willing to talk to me frankly, and who Wolf trusts.”

Yang sighed and opened his eyes. “On that count, Eva, I’m worried that you’re wrong. I don’t think I’m speaking frankly, and I don’t think that Mittermeyer has any reason to trust me.”

She smiled at him, quite a gentle look on her face. “You haven’t heard the way he talks about you to me. I think he holds you in the highest regard.”

Yang didn’t have anything to say to that. It was a warm feeling to know that Mittermeyer, who would not lie to Evangeline on that subject, trusted him, but it was a complicated one as well. After a moment of silence, he said, “They’ve been gone for a long time.”

“Should I be worried?”

“I’m sure Magdalena is just causing trouble. But you probably don’t need to be that worried about it.”

Evangeline laughed. It didn’t take that much longer for Mittermeyer and Magdelena to reappear, with Magdalena managing to look smug and Mittermeyer looking generally unhappy.

“Were you causing problems?” Yang asked.

“Of course not, darling,” Magdalena said. “I never cause problems, I only solve them.”

Yang looked over at Mittermeyer. “Are you alright?”

“Quite,” Mittermeyer said. He met Yang’s eyes, then tried to smile. “I’m simply trying to enjoy my last day of leave.”

“Oh, yeah,” Yang said. “I’m sorry you’re going.”

“I’ll be back on Odin soon enough. And I’ll write to you and tell you all about my posting.” Yang took this to mean that Mittermeyer would tell him what was going on with him in a letter, since they wrote to each other all the time anyway.

“Shame that your engineering courses ended up being the deciding factor in your posting,” Yang said.

“I’ll ask for a transfer when I get promoted,” Mittermeyer said. “It’s not really a position that suits me.”

“You said you were doing well at it,” Evangeline said. “And you will be promoted. That seems like it is suitable.”

Mittermeyer shrugged. “I don’t enjoy the work as much as I would enjoy something else, I think.”

Talking about Mittermeyer’s dislike of engineering was a less fraught topic than anything else, so the atmosphere of the breakfast shifted slowly to something more comfortable. Evangeline was very attentive to him, and she was able to make him laugh, something that they both seemed to appreciate. Yang watched them, considering it all. It was true that there was none of the natural completeness that Mittermeyer and Reuenthal seemed to have together, but it would have been a lie to say that Evangeline and Mittermeyer were unimaginable as a couple. If it came to it, they would make each other happy, at least some, Yang thought. Even if it wasn’t whatever secret joy that Reuenthal brought him, Yang thought that Mittermeyer might make that sacrifice. Would it be fair to her, though? He wished he had the liberty to stop thinking about the situation.

They finished eating, and parted on good terms. 

“Fraulein Evangeline,” Magdalena said, as they stood outside the restaurant. “You absolutely must come to my house for dinner some time. I shall send you an invitation.”

“Oh, thank you,” Evangeline said, smiling shyly. “I would be delighted.”

Seeing Yang’s somewhat concerned look, Magdalena said, “Though I will have to promise Hank that I will be on my  _ best _ behavior.”

“I don’t mind,” Evangeline said, which made Magdalena laugh and reach out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind Evangeline’s ear. Yang narrowed his eyes at her, though he didn’t think that anyone noticed.

“That’s very kind of you,” she said with a smile. “I know I often make a fool of myself.”

Yang turned away from them and towards Mittermeyer. Their eyes met. “Stay safe on your deployment,” Yang said, holding out his hand. Mittermeyer took it, and clasped Yang’s shoulder with his other hand.

“I should say the same to you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“But I suspect that your nature puts you in more danger here than I am in a construction facility.”

Yang squeezed Mittermeyer’s hand, then dropped his arm to his side. “My easygoing nature has served me well in the viper’s nest so far.”

Mittermeyer smiled a little. “It’s not the easygoing part that I’m worried about.”

“I’m sure I’ll still be around when you get back.”

“Write to me so that I know you haven’t died.”

“You know I always do.”

Mittermeyer nodded, then turned to Evangeline. “Shall we go, Eva?”

She nodded. “Thank you for coming to brunch,” she said to Yang and Magdalena.

“Any time,” Yang said. Mittermeyer held out his arm and she took it, and the two of them walked off towards the parking lot behind the restaurant.

Magdalena’s chauffeur was pulling up in front, and she and Yang both got in. Magdalena directed the car to drive them to her house.

“You’re not going to let me go home?” Yang asked. “You know I have work to do, right?”

“Work? You mean writing your little book.”

“Well--”

“I’ll have someone drive you home.”

“What’s gotten you so worked up?”

“I’ll tell you when we get back.”

At Magdalena’s house, she very carefully made sure that her mother was not around, then led Yang into her bedroom. Yang wasn’t sure what she meant by bringing him there-- perhaps just to not be disturbed. Yang hadn’t put much thought into what her taste in decor might be, but her room was surprisingly pleasant and uncluttered, though there were what seemed to be treasured childhood memorabilia on a shelf. Yang hovered uncomfortably near the closed door while Magdalena seated herself on a chair in front of her dressing mirror, peering into her own reflection without speaking. Yang stayed silent, trusting that Magdalena would speak when she was ready.

“I had Ingrid over for dinner last night,” she finally said.

“I’m aware,” Yang said. “I thought that would put you in a good mood.”

“She almost didn’t come to the ballet,” Magdalena said, a note of pain in her voice. “And then she almost didn’t come here for dinner.”

“But she did?”

“I can convince her to do anything,” Magdalena said. “I always have been able to.”

Yang tilted his head and studied her. “Why didn’t she want to come?”

“If you breathe a single word of this to another human being, I will destroy your entire life.”

“Aren’t I already keeping the biggest secret that I can?” Yang asked.

Magdalena was fiddling with tubes of lipstick on the table in front of her, not looking at Yang, even at his reflection in the mirror. She nodded a little. “That’s why I’m telling you.”

Yang decided that she would be more comfortable if he stopped hovering, so he sat down on the edge of her bed, behind her so that they could see each other’s faces in the mirror. Magdalena was looking down at her hands.

“I got my mother to go out,” she said. “So we could spend some time alone. Here.”

Yang nodded. He didn’t feel particularly curious about Magdalena’s sex life, but he figured he was about to hear about it, so he asked, “What was the problem?”

“Nobody else would ever see,” Magdalena said finally. “Not unless they took her dress off.” She ran her hand briefly over her own side, then her inner thigh, face twisted as she remembered something ugly. 

Yang remained silent.

“You ever had a bruise where you could see the indent of every finger?” she asked.

“They’ve only been married for a month,” Yang said.

“Are you saying I don’t know what I saw?”

He shook his head, holding up his hands. “No. I’m just… shocked. I have to ask-- what exactly did you see? Or what did she tell you? Did you talk to her?”

“She says that--” She broke off and shook her head. “It would be one thing if he just didn’t care about her, or if he demanded what husbands demand from their wives. That would be one thing.”

“And it’s not that? It’s more than that?”

“She said-- on the first night they were married, she said something stupid to him, she didn’t even remember what it was, and he threw this--” She gestured a little, trying to indicate the size of it. “Ashtray. Made out of stone. At her head.”

“It hit her?”

“He was careful to throw it at somewhere her hair covered, apparently.” Magdalena reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. “Look at this.” She handed it to him.

On the screen was a picture, one of Ingrid and Prince Ludwig standing together and smiling, clearly taken on their honeymoon on Phezzan. Ingrid had a kind of vacant expression on her face. 

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Yang asked. On the surface, it was a completely normal picture.

“Look at her eyes, Hank.” Yang zoomed in on the photo. One of Ingrid’s pupils was hugely dilated, while the other was the appropriate size for the sunny day. He winced a little. Concussion, probably. It was amazing that she could bear to be out in the sun-- her head probably hurt more than words could express.

“Oh,” Yang said. He passed the phone back wordlessly. If that was the way that she was being treated, and probably worse that Magdalena couldn’t bring herself to describe to him, Ingrid’s life was probably in danger. An untreated concussion was not a small thing.

Magdalena was quiet for a long second. “It’s my fault,” she said.

“He knows?”

“No. I think I’d be dead if he did. I told her to marry him. I thought it would be good for her. To be kaiserin.”

“I don’t think--”

“She didn’t want to.”

“You said yourself she didn’t have a choice.”

“She could have run away, before,” Magdalena said. “Gotten out.”

“You can’t blame yourself for saying that marrying a prince is better than fleeing your homeland,” Yang said, a particularly bitter twist in his voice. “Trust me.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you, Hank von Leigh?”

“I do.”

Magdalena leaned her head on her hands. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked. “Is there anything I can do? Do I have to just stand here and watch and smile when I see them together, and die just knowing? What if he kills her one day?”

Yang didn’t say anything.

“Tell me what to do, Hank,” she said. “You’re… Cora told me that her father said that you’re brilliant at coming up with plans.” She laughed a little, a strangled sound. “And that you’re sixty percent of the way to being a traitor already.

“Are you actually asking?” Yang asked.

“I can’t live with myself if I don’t do something,” Magdalena said. “You understand that, right?”

He did understand, of course. His thoughts went unbidden, not to El Facil, but to the conversation he had had with Oberstein afterwards. Oberstein had told him that his life was too valuable to sacrifice for even a million people, but Yang was nodding, now, and thereby tying his life to one sad woman. One sad noble woman, married to the crown prince. Oberstein would say that she was valueless, Yang thought. But he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Yes, I do understand.”

“Then what should I do?”

Yang closed his eyes and tilted his head back to the ceiling, drawing his legs up onto Magdalena’s bed and sitting cross legged there for a minute.

“You can buy time,” he said. “But it will be…”

“What?”

“You won’t like what I’m going to say.”

“What are you going to say? Just say it.” Magdalena was on the verge of hysteria, and Yang tried to keep his voice soothing, but he didn’t think he was very good at it.

“Prince Ludwig probably knows better than anyone else the value of having an heir,” he said finally. “If she gets pregnant, she’ll be safer.”

Magdalena let out a choked sob. “And then what? Once she has a baby boy, then there’s no reason--”

“It gives you time to find a way to get her out,” Yang said.

“You can’t just-- she’s kept-- out where?”

“To Phezzan, or the Alliance, I don’t know.” He shrugged, miserably. “There has to be some way.”

“If it happens while she’s pregnant, they’ll track her down,” Magdalena pointed out. “A claimant to the throne--”

“I know,” Yang said. He ran his hand through his hair. “She needs to have the baby first.”

“And leave it with him?”

“What choice does she have?”

Magdalena clenched her hands into fists, gathering the fabric of her skirt. “I don’t know.”

“It’s something that can be figured out,” Yang said, though he knew that if Ingrid was to escape, the baby would need to be left with the royal family. Having a claimant to the throne hiding out on the other side of the galaxy would be a political disaster the likes of which hadn’t been seen for hundreds of years. One of the many problems of monarchy, Yang mused, brain oddly fixated on that despite the more pressing parts of the situation. 

Magdalena nodded a little. “You’ll help me figure it out?”

“Yes, of course,” Yang said. He was already in it deep. How did he keep getting into these situations? All of his friends would kill him if they found out. They just wouldn’t be allowed to find out. More than even El Facil, no one could find out about this.

“We’ll probably need help,” Magdalena said. “Do you know anyone on Phezzan who could?”

Yang nodded. “You have money. That will help.”

“Anything you need.”

“I’ll write to… an old friend of mine,” Yang said. “He might be able to help.”

“Who?”

“Phezzani merchant,” Yang said. “I think I can still contact him.” He had fallen out of touch with Boris Konev since coming to the Empire, since they had both agreed it would be safer for him to not have traceable contact, but Yang figured this was an exception. Although he disliked the idea of getting his childhood friend wrapped up in Imperial politics, but he didn’t have much of a choice-- not like he knew anyone else. 

She nodded. “Good. Do it.”

“Okay,” Yang said. “Okay.”

Magdalena looked up at him. Some of her makeup had smeared around her eyes. “Thank you.”

“Er, no problem,” Yang said, and awkwardly rubbed his neck again. She laughed a little.

“I hope it’s no problem.”

He shrugged. “I hope so.” But he suspected that it wouldn’t be a non-problem at all.

* * *

_ June 481 IC, Odin _

“It’s done,” Magdalena said. It was evening, and she and Yang were walking in one of the gardens in her estate, arm in arm. Yang had been to her house for dinner, and had spent the whole meal being glared at by Frau Westpfale, but it had been worth it to get this chance to talk alone afterwards. He was sure that Magdalena’s mother was still watching them out of one of the windows of the house, but at least this far away from everyone else, they could speak without being overheard. “She called me this morning. Positive test.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“She probably told her doctor,” Magdalena said. “And if he knows, then the Kaiser will soon enough, and so will Ludwig.”

“But it won’t be in the papers.”

“No, of course not. Not until she starts to show.” Magdalena stopped briefly and touched the petals of a rose on a nearby bush, gently at first, then savagely ripping one off and crushing it between her fingers. “It’s so easy to lose a pregnancy this early.”

Yang nodded. “That’s true. We can hope she keeps it.”

“I don’t know what would happen if-- you know, I can’t even think about it.”

“Has she been alright?”

“I don’t know,” Magdalena said. “As well as can be expected, probably. She continues to breathe and walk and talk and attend social functions.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”

“Nothing, I guess,” Yang said. He scuffed his feet on the path.

“What’s our next step?” Magdalena asked.

“We wait,” Yang said. “We hope that she’s safer now, at least.”

“I don’t like that feeling.”

“There is one favor you can do for me,” Yang said.

“What?”

“I think I need to switch postings,” Yang said. “My CO watches me like a hawk, and it makes it hard for me to do anything.”

“Won’t it be more suspicious for you to change posts?”

“Not if I…” Yang hesitated. “That’s why I need your help.”

“I don’t know what sway I have over military postings. Unless you wanted to be transferred directly under, I don’t know, Duke Braunschweig or something. I could probably get that to happen.”

“No, not that,” Yang said. “I don’t want to leave the capital. I wouldn’t be much help to you if I was out in space.”

She nodded. “What can I do, then?”

Yang ran his hand over the back of his head. “You know I’ve been writing a history, right?”

“You only bring it up about once every time we talk. Yes, of course I know you’ve been writing a history, idiot.”

“Maybe I can…” He was furiously tugging on his own hair now, nervous about what he was about to ask. “If you can give it to Princess Amarie, maybe she can show it to the Kaiser, and mention offhand that I would be better off working in a position where I can have more time to research…”

“Like what?”

“Normally people who write research like this are academics,” Yang said. “Doctoral students, professors…” He shrugged. “If I could-- maybe-- be moved into a teaching position in the history department at the IOA…”

“Why do you think this will help us at all?”

“It takes the suspicion that Bronner has off of me,” Yang said. “I’m harmless there. And I’ll have more time to help you, but I’ll still be in the capital.”

“This sounds like you just want to be a teacher.”

Yang scowled. “I don’t actually mind working for Bronner, you know,” he said. “Even if he is the way he is, I am happy with my current posting. But the man has my phone tapped because I work with sensitive documents. All my mail is read, I’m sure. If I can just get out of that--”

“And you think that people will stop paying attention to you if you get out of the PI unit?”

“I hope so. Especially if I’m getting moved specifically because the Kaiser likes me.”

She nodded a little. “Send me your history,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Yang said.

“You say you’re doing this for me, so don’t thank me.”

Yang laughed. “You know, most other people would not be asking for this,” Yang said. “I think that getting stuck at the school is a ticket to career stagnation.”

Magdalena looked over at him. “You’re really throwing away your future for me?”

Yang raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry, stupid of me to say that,” she said. She looked up at the darkening sky. “I don’t understand why you are, actually. You probably shouldn’t.”

Yang jammed his hands into his pockets. “Did you expect me to not help?”

“I don’t know if I even would have asked anyone else.”

“I love being your only viable option,” Yang said. “What would you have done without me?”

“I don’t know,” Magdalena said. “I wish I could say that I would do something, but-- I don’t know.” She seemed distraught, so Yang wrapped his arm around her shoulder and tugged her closer to him. She leaned on him heavily as they walked, keeping silent for a little while, until she said, “Ingrid isn’t a doormat, you know.”

“Did I imply that I thought she was?”

“No,” Magdalena said. “I’m just thinking about-- what she would have done if I wasn’t trying to help her.”

“And what would she do?”

Magdalena bit her lip and shook her head. “You know.”

Yang could imagine it perfectly well.

* * *

_ July 481 IC, Odin _

Kent, one of Yang’s coworkers, stuck his head into Yang’s secluded desk area. “Hey, Leigh, Bronner wants you. In his office.”

Yang put down his mug of tea on top of an open page of notes in his notebook, leaving a stained wet circle from the bottom of the mug on the paper. “That is never a good sign.”

“Yeah, well, he seems like he’s in a pissy mood.”

“Of course he is. Did he say what he wanted?”

Kent laughed. “‘Bring me Hank von Leigh, dead or alive,’ or something.”

“Thanks for summoning me alive,” Yang said.

“By all means, take your time,” Kent said as Yang languidly shut down his computer, then stood up and stretched.

“I’m sure it won’t make any difference to his mood if I’m prompt or not.” Yang patted Kent on the shoulder as he walked away. “I’ll let you know if he kills me.”

“I look forward to cleaning up whatever soggy bloodstain you leave on his office rug,” Kent called after him. Yang laughed.

He knocked on the door to Bronner’s office. “If that is anyone other than Hank von Leigh, I don’t care. Go away.”

“It’s me, sir,” Yang said, somewhat exasperated. “Should I open the door?”

“Are you waiting on a personal invitation?” Bronner yelled back. “From the kaiser himself, perhaps?” he finished as Yang pulled the door open and stepped inside. The office was just as dark as it always was, with Bronner still lit by the same sickly glow of his computer screen. Yang saluted. Bronner looked annoyed.

“I received a very strange letter, Leigh,” Bronner said. “I’m sure you know something about it.”

“I am not a person who reads others’ correspondence,” Yang said. “So I doubt that--”

Bronner tossed a piece of paper at him. Being light, it fluttered towards the ground, and Yang had to take a few steps forward to grab it out of the air. “Letterhead. Signature. Official seal,” Bronner said.

Yang clamped down on his instinct to smile. All were the marks of Kaiser Friedrich IV. His eyes skimmed over the letter. It was exactly what he had asked Magdalena to secure for him-- a transfer to the staff of the IOA, though it came with an unexpected promotion. Yang hadn’t done anything to earn being moved up to Lieutenant Commander, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. “I’m honored,” Yang finally said.

Broner folded his hands on his desk. “Do you care to explain exactly how and why the kaiser has taken a personal interest in you, of all people?”

Yang shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure it isn’t too complicated for me to understand.”

He rubbed the back of his head. “Well, the Baroness von Westpfale is interested in me, and she’s friends with Princess Amarie, and the princess-- I think-- wants us to get married, so she’s trying to… improve my situation, I suppose.” He trailed off.

“You don’t strike me as the marrying type,” Bronner said, acid in his voice.

“Sir?”

“And especially not to the Baroness Westpfale.”

“I’m not sure why that’s your business,” Yang said finally, Bronner having let him stew in discomfort for a second.

“The capital is a small place, Leigh. Very small. And you are not the only person who knows people. And I am not the only one who is capable of hearing things.”

“Sir, if you think that I’m trying to be a social climber, really that couldn’t be further from the truth. I didn’t want any of this.”

“I have no idea what you’re trying to be. I was operating under the impression that you cared about your career.”

Yang was silent.

“Even if just to cause problems.”

“I have no intention of causing problems,” Yang said. “Won’t it make you happy that I’m being shuffled off somewhere completely harmless?”

“Leigh, do you really think that teaching at the IOA is a harmless position?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“To hear Staden tell it, you caused enough trouble there as a student. Why should I think you’re going to toe the line?”

“I suppose you will just have to trust me, sir. I haven’t caused any problems while I’ve been with you, have I?”

Bronner frowned at him for a long second, then his whole manner seemed to shift. “I must say, I’ll be sad to lose you, Leigh.”

“Er, thank you, sir.”

“You’re not stupid. It’s a blessing and a curse.”

“I don’t feel like I contributed that much here.”

“Hm? Well, nobody does. That’s the problem of the PI unit. Nobody likes to listen to what we have to say. Sometimes we repeat things enough that they get taken under consideration, though.”

“That’s the duty of the prophet,” Yang said, which made Bronner chuckle.

“You should refuse this placement,” Bronner said. “It’s not going to do you good in the long run.”

“I can’t refuse a posting decreed by the kaiser.”

“I think you could. In fact, I think it would be easier for you to do so than if it were just some other assignment sending you off to the frontier.”

“Are you annoyed that you didn’t get the chance to kick me out to there?” Yang asked.

“No,” Bronner said flatly. “I was taking the duty that Rear Admiral Merkatz gave me seriously, you know. I was going to keep you until you proved to be of use, and then I was going to send you on to something higher.”

“Thank you, sir,” Yang said.

“I don’t like the idea of you sneaking your way out from my clutches,” Bronner said. “I find it distasteful.”

“We play the part the director tells us to,” Yang said.

“You can’t get metaphorical on me, Leigh. That’s my job. If there’s any scene being played out here, I have the distinct impression that the kaiser is as much of an actor playing an unwitting role as I am.”

“Then perhaps it is a good thing that life is not a play,” Yang said. “There’s not necessarily a script that everyone is speaking. There’s no story written down somewhere that we’re all cursed to follow until the bitter end.”

Bronner smiled. “There isn’t, Leigh?”

“I don’t think it’s healthy to believe in destiny, sir.”

“And yet you said yourself that here we try to play the part of the prophet.”

“Sir, I feel like you’re trying to get me to agree to something.”

Bronner didn’t respond for a long second. “No, I don’t think I am.” He shook his head slightly. “I’m going to continue to keep an eye on you, Leigh.”

“Why?” Yang was neither surprised nor disappointed. He wasn’t sure if that meant that Bronner was going to continue to have his phone tapped and his other activities monitored, but Yang decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Perhaps Bronner just meant that he would have Merkatz’s daughter spy on him through the complicated social chain that connected her to Magdalena.

“It’s my duty. Besides, you may be useful, in the future.”

“You make me work more than my salary is worth,” Yang grumbled. 

“Please, you spend half your time sleeping or working on your book,” Bronner said. “I should write you up for time theft.”

Yang smiled a little. “It’s good for soldiers to be idle.”

“It’s remarks like that that make me glad to see the end of you, though I’m sure you will darken my doorway again in the future,” Bronner said. “Clean out your desk.”

* * *

_ August 481 IC, Odin _

There was a staff dinner for all the IOA teachers before the start of the term. Yang was, by far, the lowest ranked person there. It would have been awkward enough that the makeup of the staff had not changed much since he graduated, so Yang was immediately recognized by all of his former teachers, with varying degrees of associated fondness. The whole thing was made more awkward by the fact that word seemed to have gotten around, somehow, that Yang was here on direct order of the kaiser. No one seemed to know what to do with that, especially since many of them had heard of or remembered Yang’s truly embarrassing incident at Neue Sanssouci his freshman year at the IOA.

Staden took pity on Yang and waved him over to sit next to him at the dinner, rather than with the history department staff which Yang had been heading for. He looked much the same as he had when Yang had last seen him, though with a few more streaks of grey in his hair.

“I didn’t think you liked this place so much as to want to return,” Staden said, after the welcome speech had been given and everyone was settled in with their meals. “I can’t imagine what’s caused all of this.”

“It’s complicated and stupid and not worth talking about,” Yang said.

“So, you’re not happy to be here?”

“I didn’t say that at all,” Yang said. “I think it’s an opportunity, and I think I’ll enjoy it, but it’s certainly not the way I imagined my career going.”

“Yes,” Staden said. “And after I went to so much trouble to get you a good start in life.”

“I’m sorry your effort was wasted, sir.”

Staden laughed a little. “Well, you’ve already been promoted twice. I think that’s better than your classmates can say.”

“You keep tabs on us?”

“Of course I do, in a general sense.” A silence fell between them for a second.

“You said at one point that in a different world I would be a teacher,” Yang said. “I suppose we live in that world now.”

“You said it would be a fairer one.”

Yang picked up his wine glass and took a sip. “Unfortunately, I’ve had to revise my opinion on that.”

Staden laughed a little. “There may not be such a thing as a fair world, Leigh.”

“There isn’t one, if history is any indication.”

“You sound grimmer than you used to. I didn’t think that just a few years in the fleet would turn you into a pessimist.”

“I believe I’ve always been this way, sir,” Yang said.

“Between you and me,” Staden said, though their conversation was audible to anyone around them, “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I am sure that you’ll make a valuable addition to the staff.”

“I certainly hope to be,” Yang said. “I hope that I’ll be able to do some good here.”

“In what sense?” Staden asked.

“Having an understanding of history has given me a better ability to make decisions in all areas of my life,” Yang said. “Perhaps I can show the latest crop of students the way I see it.”

“What classes have you been assigned?”

“I have the entire freshman cohort for Military History I,” Yang said. “But I’ve also been given the Ancient Earth elective.”

“The one that Chesterburg used to have? I assume you took it with him.”

“Of course, sir. I greatly enjoyed it.”

“Will you be following the same scope as he did?”

“Mmm, probably not,” Yang said. “Chesterburg had a focus on naval engagements, which is understandable, but I think that if I wanted to keep my scope that narrow, I’d beg to start a second ancient Earth naval history course. I’m going to see how it feels to cast my net a little more widely.”

“Do you want a word of advice?”

“Of course, sir,” Yang said.

“Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”

“I will try not to.”

“Most students, even those with a passion for history, are not as astute as you are. And the ones with a passion for history are rather few and far between.”

“You don’t even teach the history cohort,” Yang pointed out.

“That’s true, and I’m glad of it,” Staden said. “Having the SW group and a few ghastly sections of engineers is bad enough.”

Yang laughed at that. “They’re not that bad.”

“You’ll come to resent them soon enough,” Staden said. “Like I said, students are less skilled than you might hope, no matter how strict the admissions standards are.”

“Well, it’s my job to make them more skilled, isn’t it?”

Staden laughed. “Leigh, it will be your job to survive your first year teaching. After that, then you can worry about the students.”

“Perhaps I should have stayed with the PI unit,” Yang said. “It sounds like it was less work.”

“I’m sure that it was.”

* * *

_ October 481 IC, Odin _

“Magdalena tells me that you’re not finding teaching as easy as she had hoped,” Princess Amarie said. “Is that true?”

Yang, who had been about to stick a bite of potatoes into his mouth, paused so that he could answer the question. He had been mostly sitting silently at this dinner with Princess Amarie, Duke Braunschweig, their daughter Elizabeth, Magdalena, and Frau Westpfale, but now that he was being addressed, he had to answer. “I enjoy it,” Yang said. “It has been an adjustment, though.”

“I suppose I was operating under the assumption that he’d have more free time to see me, not less,” Magdalena said, putting a slightly petulant note in her voice and leaning on Yang’s shoulder. The lights in Magdalena’s dining room were twinkling and dim, and they enhanced Magdalena’s pretty features and smile. Yang couldn’t help but feel warm when he looked down at her, even if she was causing him problems intentionally.

Amarie smiled somewhat indulgently, Frau Westpfale looked like she’d taken a lick of lemon slice, and Duke Braunschweig looked bored. Elizabeth was poking at her food with her fork rather disinterestedly.

“That’s what you get when you mess with people’s postings,” Branschweig said.

“Oh, Otto,” Magdalena said, “at least you can be happy that I didn’t ask you to take him into your command.”

“Quite,” Braunschweig said. “It might have been funny if you had.”

“Why is that, darling?” Amarie asked.

“My latest aide is apparently familiar with you,” Braunschweig said. “And not in a pleasant way.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Yang said. “I wasn’t aware I had made any enemies.”

“Apparently, he was a classmate of yours. Are you familiar with Lieutenant Ansbach?”

Yang couldn’t quite stop his face from twisting up, though he tried. He took a sip of his wine. “Yes, I am,” he said.

“I see the dislike is mutual.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s dislike,” Yang said.

Braunschweig, who didn’t hold Yang in much higher opinion than Ansbach did, smiled a little. “Of course not.”

“I shall simply hope that we continue to not meet each other, and thus we have no reason for our differences to be worked out,” Yang said.

“Why don’t you like Lieutenant Ansbach?” Amarie asked. “Is there some sort of schoolboy grudge?”

“The reasons we dislike each other would not, I think, make pleasant dinner conversation,” Yang said, trying to dodge the subject.

“Is it because there are ladies in the room?” Magdalena asked, gesturing at her mother, Princess Amarie, and Elizabeth, clearly trying to stir up drama. Yang kicked her leg underneath the table, trying to get her to stop, but she grinned and pressed onwards. “Now you’ve made me very curious.”

“During my freshman year, during the visit to Neue Sanssouci that the top members of each class take, someone… I would say attempted to murder me, but that would be ascribing thought to their actions that I don’t actually know.”

Frau Westpfale looked at him. “Really? What happened?”

“It’s a hunting trip,” Yang explained. “A group of several people surrounded me, and one of them shot me in the leg with an arrow. I’m not sure if they missed a more fatal location by accident, or if they were just trying to make a point. Well, I might have died from that anyway,” Yang said.

“You survived, though,” Magdalena said.

“Obviously,” Braunschweig said.

“What happened?” Elizabeth asked. “Tell us.”

Yang looked down at his plate. “I was very lucky that someone who did not have a grudge against me happened to be nearby.”

“Who?” Magdalena asked.

“You’ve met him,” Yang said, hoping she would catch his tone to stop asking questions.

“Now you’re being evasive on purpose,” Amarie said. “You make it sound as though you have something to hide.”

Yang wanted to squirm away from this engagement, but he couldn’t. “Princess, it was not my most dignified of moments,” Yang admitted.

“You’re more amusing when you have things to say,” Branschweig said.

“If you must know,” Yang said, “I fell off my horse and was sitting in the mud contemplating pulling the arrow out of my leg when the top student in the class, Oskar von Reuenthal, told me that I absolutely would bleed to death if I did that.”

Magdalena laughed. “He rescued you, did he? Your knight in shining armor?”

“I got blood all over his school uniform,” Yang muttered. There was absolutely no reason for Magdalena to be pressing him on this now. He was rather annoyed by it, but no one else at the table seemed to find Magdalena’s behavior problematic-- they were used to her, perhaps.

“And what does this have to do with Lieutenant Ansbach?” Amarie asked.

“He made a comment later that indicated he had been the originator of the arrow,” Yang said. “I couldn’t say for sure if it was him or not, so don’t take this as an accusation. He doesn’t like me.”

“Did you take revenge at any point?” Braunschweig asked, seemingly curious, now.

“Well, I continued to beat him academically,” Yang said with a shrug. “Generally speaking, revenge is more trouble than it’s worth, especially when I couldn’t even be sure that he was responsible in the first place.”

“You think everything is more trouble than it’s worth,” Magdalena said.

“Things often are,” Yang protested. 

The conversation was allowed to move on from there, with nobody really wanting to hear more details about Yang’s personal life, which he was grateful for. He was more than happy to listen to whatever imperial court gossip that Princess Amarie and Frau Westpfale and Magdalena wanted to discuss. Duke Braunschweig was disinclined to participate in that kind of talk, and Yang felt his eyes on him occasionally through the rest of the meal, but he couldn’t parse what the duke was thinking.

After dinner, Magdalena and Yang were able to find some privacy to talk in one of the many rooms of Magdalena’s house, after she had bid goodnight to Princess Amarie and her husband and daughter. Frau Westpfale had seemed as though she wanted to ensure that Magdalena and Yang were not going to be together too long, but Magdalena had said something snippy to her mother that caused her to walk away. Yang didn’t hear the words of the exchange, but he did hear the tone and see the frustrated way Magdalena walked back into the drawing room and flopped down bodily on the couch, throwing her arms out.

“I can’t stay much longer,” Yang said.

“I’m aware,” Magdalena replied. “I should thank you for coming.”

“You didn’t have to drag out the part where everyone was questioning me. You certainly didn’t have to say that about Reuenthal.”

“Why not?” Magdalena asked. “It was funny. And if you talk, you give Otto less reason to dislike you. People like you once they get to know you.”

“Feeling liked by Duke Braunschweig is not something that I need,” Yang said.

“Why not?”

Yang switched the subject. “I was able to make the arrangements with my friend,” he said.

“Really?”

“It’s not going to be a simple thing, you understand that, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Magdalena said. “What’s the plan?”

“Konev is working on a ship that takes pilgrims to Earth from Phezzan,” Yang said. “We’re going to need to get Ingrid onto a ship going to Earth, and from there Konev can get her asylum in the FPA.”

“Why would anyone want to go to Earth?” Magdalena asked.

“Some religious thing,” Yang said. “It’s not really important, except that it gives us an in.”

“And how are we going to get Ingrid onto a ship headed for Earth?”

“Does Prince Ludwig care what she does with her time?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think he would be averse to her travelling?”

“I wouldn’t want to be the one to ask.”

Yang sighed. “If we can get her to pretend to have genuine religious beliefs, maybe after she has the baby she can simply board a ship. It wouldn’t be… Well, if the baby is fine, then there’s no reason for her to remain in the picture.”

“An heir and a spare,” Magdalena said.

Yang shook his head. “Ludwig might have learned from his father that having younger brothers can lead to trouble,” Yang said. “He’s the only boy, after all.”

“It’s a fine line to walk, apparently,” Magdalena said. “If more people were less touchy about their daughters inheriting…” She had a grim smile on her face.

“Do you think that could work?” Yang asked.

“Do you have a backup plan?”

“If it can’t be done aboveboard, I don’t like it, but we can try to sneak her onto the ship.”

“How?”

“Frame it like a kidnapping, maybe.” Yang rubbed his head and paced back and forth. “I’m not good at this.”

“You’re not?”

“It’s not a fleet battle,” Yang said. “Those are much easier to understand.”

Magdalena leaned forward. “You’d rather be doing this than a fleet battle, though.”

“Well, yes,” Yang admitted.

She flopped back onto the couch. “What would be the point in someone kidnapping her, if we were going to frame it that way?”

“Ransom money, maybe? The mother of one of the kaiser’s grandchildren is a tempting target.”

“But what if they actually try to pay the ransom?”

“We’ll have to make it look like she died.”

“And how are ‘we’ going to make it look like she was kidnapped?”

“There are plenty of ways to send anonymous messages.” Yang said. “But that’s beside the point. If we find out that needs to happen, we can make it happen with the resources we have at our disposal at the time.”

“You live on the edge.”

“I’m better at tactics than I am at grand strategy,” Yang said. 

“And what’s the difference?”

“Tactics is actual battlefield maneuvers.” He moved his hands illustratively. “When to advance, when to retreat, how you position your ships. Or whatever we’re working with in this case. Using the pieces that you have in a situation to win. Strategy is manipulating the overall situation to make sure that you have an advantage.”

“Why don’t you think you’re good at that?”

Yang shrugged. “I’m lazy.”

“You can’t just use that as an excuse for everything!”

“It’s easier to be given pieces and figure out what to do with them from there,” Yang said. “You can sometimes win with just tactics, and you can sometimes win with just strategy, but a good leader should have both. I’m better at one than the other, but most people are.”

“What about your friends?” Magdalena asked.

“Hm?”

“Oskar and Wolf. Which are they better at?”

“Oh. Mittermeyer is a better tactician, and Reuenthal is a better strategist.” He looked off into the distance for a second. “It was hard to beat them when they were working together,” he said with a half-laugh. “They compliment each other well.”

“Really?” Her question was pointed, but Yang ignored her tone.

“When we played our game, Reuenthal would manipulate the whole theater to make it so that Mittermeyer was in a better position to succeed. I was always was a little too hesitant to make grand, aggressive moves like they would. Unless they were egging me on.”

“Well, what would Oskar be telling you to do here?”

“He would be telling me to mind my own business,” Yang said. “I don’t think he’d want me to get involved with this mess.”

“Why not?”

“The idea that Reuenthal would go out of his way to help a woman who’s cheating on her husband is a truly laughable one.”

Magdalena scowled.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Yang said. “I know that’s not what this is about. All I’m saying is that Reuenthal has some ideas about how the world works that I don’t always agree with.”

“Where does he get those ideas from?”

“I’m not going to divulge his--”

“Gods, nevermind,” Magdalena said, clearly annoyed. “You and your friends have issues.”

“You’re one to talk.”

* * *

_ November 481 IC, Odin _

“I don’t like this plan as much anymore,” Magdalena whispered to Yang. It was evening, and Yang and Magdalena were walking arm in arm through the cold streets of the capital, approaching the place where Ingrid had asked them to meet her, a building owned by the Earth Church. They weren’t headed to the actual house of worship, the building that Yang sometimes walked past when he came into the city from the IOA, but one of the many administrative buildings or community centers that the church owned. Ingrid had sent Magdalena a message saying that she wanted her to meet the local bishop, and Magdalena had not wanted to go alone, so Yang was coming as well. Magdalena had told her driver that she and Yang were going to be having dinner together, which they had, very quickly, and now they were heading to this meeting on foot.

“It’s the only plan we’ve got,” Yang said. “And it seems like it’s working so far.”

“I didn’t want her to get actually involved in whatever this religion is,” Magdalena whined. “It seems stupid.”

“How do you know she isn’t just playing along for everyone’s sake?” Yang asked. “You have said yourself many times that Ingrid isn’t stupid. It seems unlikely that she would develop real religious convictions in two months.”

“Being pregnant rots your brain,” Magdalena said.

“You don’t plan to have children someday?”

“I’d literally rather die,” Magdalena said. “It’s not that I don’t like kids,” she clarified. “Elizabeth is fine, and so is the little Mariendorf. Even Cora’s baby is cute, I guess. It’s everything else about the idea that I hate.”

“I understand,” Yang said.

“I don’t think you do, but I can’t fault you for that.”

They approached the Earth Church building, the olive branch and yellow cross flag fluttering in the wind, illuminated by a spotlight from the building itself. They climbed the short set of steps and entered, finding themselves faced with a receptionist who they gave their names to. They were quickly led off down a hallway, and shown into an office where Ingrid and a man in dark robes were sitting. 

The dark robed man and Ingrid both stood when Yang and Magdalena entered. “Baroness Westpfale, I’m glad you could join us,” the man said.

“Maggie, I almost thought you weren’t coming,” Ingrid said, smiling a little.

Magdalena walked in and put her hand gently on Ingrid’s arm. “Darling, would I ever not show up for you?”

“Of course not,” Ingrid said. “This is Bishop Wasserman, who has been very helpful to me.”

“Pleasure,” Magdalena said, and shook hands with the bishop. “This is my chaperone, Lieutenant Commander Hank von Leigh,” Magdalena said. Yang shook hands with the bishop, smiling politely. 

“Please, take a seat,” the bishop said, gesturing to some chairs next to Ingrid. Yang and Magdalena both sat. “Frau Goldenbaum has been telling me quite a lot about you, Baroness.”

“Is that so?” Magdalena asked. “Only good things, I hope.”

“Of course. She says you are an excellent friend who is doing her best to help her out of a situation she finds herself in.”

“Is that so?” Magdalena asked again. “I wasn’t aware that Ingrid liked to talk about personal matters.”

“It was somewhat due to my own curiosity,” Wasserman said. “It is not every day that the new wife of the crown prince decides to take up religion. I introduced myself.”

“What did you tell the bishop about why you were taking an interest in religion?” Magdalena asked Ingrid.

“I explained the truth about Prince Ludwig,” Ingrid said. “That’s all.”

“I have often found that people in delicate and vulnerable situations come to the church for support and reassurance,” the bishop said. “There have been many women in your positon in the past, and unfortunately there will be many in the future.”

“And how did my name come up in these conversations?” Magdalena asked.

“Only that you have a great interest in helping your closest friend find solace in these difficult times,” the bishop said. “I understand that there is something that Ingrid believes we can do for her.”

Magdalena glanced at Yang, who had been sitting silently and observing thus far. Yang shrugged a little, which he saw that the bishop noticed, because their eyes met for a second. The bishop smiled slightly.

“I thought that, maybe,” Magdalena began, “it might be possible for Ingrid to take a trip to Earth, as a pilgrimage. Just as a way to get away for a while.”

“And on Earth, someone, perhaps a Phezzani merchant, might pick her up on a shipment of outgoing pilgrims and spirit her away to the other side of the galaxy, perhaps?” the bishop said with a slight smile.

“You are the one who said so, not I,” Magdalena said. 

“I can understand your hesitancy,” the bishop said. “After all, it is a bit of a dangerous thing, for the mother of the eventual heir to the Goldenbaum throne to want to flee to the sworn enemies of said throne. It has the air of conspiracy.”

Magdalena glanced over at Ingrid. “And what do you think of the bishop’s story, darling?”

“He says he can help,” Ingrid said. “I trust him.”

“Do you indeed?”

“I can help,” the bishop said. “I think that we could have a mutually beneficial relationship.”

“Oh?” Magdalena asked.

“It has always been convenient, after all, for our church to cultivate a steady and unobtrusive flow of pilgrims moving throughout the galaxy. People see that we have the ability to help them, and we do.”

“How generous of you,” Magdalena said, sounding suspicious. “And how is it mutually beneficial?”

“In most cases, it is simply a matter of believers joining our church. In this case, however, I think that Frau Goldenbaum could do something more for us.”

“Ingrid is not your pawn.”

“I did not say anything of the sort,” the bishop said. “And Frau Goldenbaum would not need to do anything that she does not want to do of her own volition.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want to stay within the Empire until your baby is born,” the bishop said. “I understand that completely. And then you want to leave. But it will be hard on you to leave your baby behind, won’t it? He is flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood.”

Ingrid nodded hesitantly. Magdalena made a sour face. “So?”

“There is nothing the church understands better than the relationship between a mother and her children,” the bishop said. “All I suggest is that, while this parting may be a bitter sorrow now, at some point in the future, after Prince Ludwig has died, it may be possible for Frau Goldenbaum to return to the Empire and provide a positive maternal influence on her child.”

“You want her to whisper in the future kaiser’s ear to support your church?” Magdalena asked. “How do you even know that he--” she waved dismissively at Ingrid’s pregnant belly-- “would even want to listen to a mother who abandoned him?”

Ingrid looked down at the floor. Yang felt distinctly uncomfortable. He leaned towards Magdalena, tried to inject in his voice the kind of deference that would make his presence here unsuspicious, “Baroness, it’s possible that he would understand very well the reasons why his mother might have had to leave him.”

Magdalena frowned deeply. “And how do you feel about this, darling?”

Ingrid shook her head slightly. “I am grateful for the bishop’s offer of assistance,” she said. “But I cannot pretend to see the future.”

“I do not ask you to,” the bishop said. “And I do not even ask you to promise me anything. All I am offering is the gift of friendship, and the opportunity to escape what ails you.”

“Thank you,” Ingrid said.

“You want this?” Magdalena asked her. “You want to go along with the bishop?”

Ingrid nodded a little. 

“And when she does escape from Earth,” Magdalea asked, turning to the bishop, “will you be able to set it up to look like a kidnapping?”

“Of course,” the bishop said. “We are capable of many things.”

Magdalena glanced at Yang, who kept his face carefully neutral. She shrugged, then. “Well, if that’s all settled.”

“I appreciate your concern for your friend’s well-being,” the bishop said. “There is little in life more precious than the bond of true friendship.”

“Yeah. Right,” Magdalena muttered.

“We will be in contact with you, should we need anything,” the bishop said.

“Are you cutting me out of the operation?”

“Of course not. I simply mean that travel operations from Odin to Earth, as Frau Goldenbaum will be travelling on our ship, are most easily handled by us.”

Magdalena’s lips were pursed in a repressed frown. “Of course. I should give you the contact information of the man who’s supposed to pick her up from Earth.”

“Excellent,” Bishop Wasserman said. “I look forward to working with both him and you.” The bishop stood and extended his hand once again towards Magdalena, who also stood. They were being dismissed, so they said their goodbyes and headed out of the building. Ingrid did not follow them.

When Magdalena and Yang had made it far enough out into the cold streets that they felt sure they were no longer being observed, Magdalena said, “I like that even less than when we started.”

“It makes sense,” Yang said. “To work with them, I mean.”

“I feel like we’re selling her out.”

“She was the one who suggested this.”

“I think she’s been brainwashed.”

“Why do you have such a low opinion of Ingrid’s capability to make her own choices?”

“Because she always lets everybody else tell her what to do,” Magdalena said. “Me, her father, our teachers, everybody. Not surprising that this guy could tell her what he wants her to do and she’ll agree to it.”

“You said she wasn’t a doormat, though.”

Magdalena shook her head a little. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I, but…” Yang shrugged. “I don’t really see what harm could come of it.”

“If she does end up coming back here and trying to influence her son, that would probably be a mess.”

“It seems to me,” Yang said, a dry note in his voice, “that a kaiser whispered to by the church is no different than any other kaiser.”

“You say that now, but there have been good kaisers and bad ones.”

Yang shrugged a little. “I’m not sure that there is such a thing as a good kaiser.”

“I didn’t take you for a republican,” Magdalena said.

“You didn’t? Didn’t you say I was sixty percent of the way to a traitor already?”

She laughed. “That’s different than being a republican.”

“And do you have a problem with that?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?” Magdalena said with a laugh. “Well, I’m in no danger of becoming the kaiserin, so I shouldn’t worry if a republican wants to chop their heads off.”

Yang shook his head. “I would at least expect you to know that I’m not really bloodthirsty. Besides, I think more kaisers have had their heads chopped off by the next in line for the throne than they have by republicans of any stripe.”

“Hah. You’re probably right about that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next one were supposed to be one chapter, but then the wonderful Lydia told me, "Noodle, you cannot have a 22k word chapter, seriously." and thus demanded that I split it (which I have). So this is a somewhat truncated chapter, and things get #spicy next chapter, which I guess I'll post tomorrow? or something. who knows. anyway, this is done now lol
> 
> Chapter title from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy0LJnvWpus
> 
> Poor Mittermeyer, getting yelled at in the bathroom by Magdalena. What does she say to him? feel free to use your imagination lmao. Maybe someday I should write that scene and post it as a quasi-canon side-story.
> 
> I think it's appropriate that Ingrid, around whom this chapter and the next turn, barely has any speaking lines. That doesn't mean that she does nothing, or that she's not an actor in her own story, but a lot of the themes are about like... people being forced into circumstances that they can't control, and the decisions that they make. Ingrid has had much of the control of her own life taken away from her, even by Magdalena, who takes it upon herself to plot a way to save her.
> 
> Yang becomes a teacher to get away from Bronner spying on him. It does not really work. Yang's first year teaching experience is based on mine. Picture this: I'm newly graduated from engineering school and very unemployed. My mother is taking my younger siblings to swim practice, and she's chatting with some of the other parents there. As it turns out, one of the other swim team parents is the head of a set of charter schools, who are (for various reasons) always in desperate need of staff. Somehow, the subject comes up that I am "a person who knows how to do math" (lol). Anyway then I'm hired as an assistant to the 7th grade math teacher, which becomes a somewhat strange position b/c she quits, then I'm the building substitute, then the 6th grade science teacher quits and I take over teaching 6th grade science, they hire a new 6th grade science teacher (who promptly has a nervous break and quits), then I take over the 6th grade science class for the remainder of the year. The next year, I'm moved to the high school, where I'm once again an assistant for the math teacher. Then the math teacher quits in november (there's a pattern here...) and I take over the 9th grade algebra class for the rest of the year. That was the 17-18 school year lol. Anyway, I, like Yang, was young and thought that teaching wouldn't be that bad but, as one of my teacher friends put it, first year teaching is like getting hazed every single day. Anyway, I'm an engineer now. (This was a ramble but I don't ever waste an opportunity to tell people about this strange and miserable set of experiences lmao)
> 
> The Earth church is... convenient for plot but I'm trying to make them be a legitimately developed... thing as well. I think that's one area in which the OVA falls somewhat short.
> 
> Thank you to the excellent Lydia for the beta read. Check out the science fiction I started writing during my terrible teaching tenure @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven and the mystery I wrote after I left that place @ bit.ly/arcadispark . I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter. See you soon with the second half of this chapter!


	9. I, Claudius

_ December 481 IC, Odin _

Magdalena called Yang in the middle of the night, the night of the winter solstice. Yang was asleep, deeply, exhausted after a day spent with the Mariendorfs. Although it had been a good one, and he had been glad to spend the holiday with them, he had stayed up late drinking with the count, and had crawled into bed with a headache already blistering its way onto the edges of his brain. When his phone rang on his bedside table, the buzzing of it jittered him into an unhappy awareness. In the dim light cast by the fire in the hearth, Yang fumbled for it, knocked it to the floor, then had to lean halfway out of bed to grab it. It was still ringing.

“Odin coroner’s office,” Yang groaned as he answered it.

“I’m sending a car to pick you up,” Magdalena said.

“What time is it?”

“Get ready to go.”

“Where are you going to take me?”

But Magdalena had already hung up.

Yang laid in bed for a long minute, staring up at the ceiling where the fire made flickering, dim patches above him. He had no desire to get up, but Magdalena hadn’t given him a choice, so up he was. He put on the first clothes that fell to hand, which were what he had been wearing to the Mariendorf’s during the day, his nicest set of civilian clothes.

He felt disgusting and out of sorts as he stumbled through the dark house, trying not to wake the other residents of the boarding house or his landladies. On the way out of his door, he tripped over a stack of graded papers he had been intending to hand back to his students and sent them scattering out into the hallway. Yang kicked them back inside his room as best he could, then crept towards the kitchen, where he waited for the lights of Magdalena’s chauffeured car to shine in through the foggy windows.

He pulled on his winter coat and hat and shuffled out into the snow, the slowly falling flakes landing on his face and catching in his hair. He still didn’t feel quite awake, but he climbed into the backseat of the car anyway.

“Do you know what’s going on?” he asked the driver.

“No, sir,” the driver said. “I just brought the baroness home from Neue Sanssouci and she asked me to fetch you.”

“Why was she at Neue Sanssouci?”

“For the kaiser’s winter solstice ball.”

“Oh, I forgot about that. Was she upset that I said no to attending with her?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

Yang nodded, and they rode in silence for the rest of the journey. It was an odd trip, Yang felt. The streets were completely deserted, and the car’s headlights only illuminated the space directly in front of the vehicle, rendering the world in pitch black and tiny white flashes of snowflakes and drifts at the side of the road. Between that and the haze of sleepiness that Yang was still trying to shake off, the driver could have been taking him anywhere, for any length of time, and Yang wouldn’t have known or been able to protest.

They arrived at Magdalena’s mansion. It was dark and cold inside, and Yang was shown into one of the private drawing rooms where he stood, examining the decor with his hands in his pockets. He was worried that if he sat down on the couch he would fall asleep before Magdalena made it into the room.

“Hank,” she said, entering and startling him. He turned away from the curio cabinet he had been looking at and towards her. In the dim and warm lamplight, her party dress made her look somewhat ethereal, but the expression on her face was anything but. Her makeup was smudged at the corners of her eyes, and her lipstick was ragged, as though she had been biting her lips hard enough to scrape it off with her teeth.

“Magdalena,” he said, which was about the only thing that he could say.

She walked up to him, and it was unclear what she was looking for, reassurance or something else. Yang wasn’t sure what to do with his hands-- he didn’t know what was going on.

“Ingrid is in my bedroom,” Magdalena said. “I gave her a sleeping pill.”

“Why? What?” And then a second thought: “Is that even safe for the baby?”

Magdalena leaned against him for a second, saying, “I don’t care,” then stood bolt upright again, as though she had realized something. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. Oh gods.”

Yang grabbed both of her arms. “What’s going on?”

“Ludwig is dead,” she said. And that was apparently hard enough for her to get out that she ended up slumping a little, and Yang guided her onto one of the couches.

“Explain to me,” Yang said, clearing his mind completely. He felt calm and empty, rather like he had when Merkatz had placed him in charge of his fleet. He pushed all of his panic to the far back of his mind, and stood in front of Magdalena, waiting. “Tell me what happened.”

Her voice came out in small stutters, so unlike her usual poised assurance, however false that sometimes was. “Ingrid killed him,” she said. “She stabbed him. At the palace.”

“Now?”

“Two hours ago.”

“Who knows that he’s dead?”

“No one knew when we left.” She hesitated. “I don’t think-- I don’t know-- nobody will probably find him until tomorrow morning.”

“Where is he?”

“In their bedroom.”

“How did it happen?”

Magdalena shook her head. “She didn’t, couldn’t, say. I think they must have been fighting. It was his knife.”

Yang nodded. “You weren’t there?”

“I was still at the party.”

“And then…”

“I brought her here.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It was the only thing I could think of.”

“Does anyone else know she’s here?”

“My driver, Carl. Anyone who saw us leaving.”

“You didn’t sneak out?”

“How could we?”

“And did Ingrid look…”

“She changed clothes.”

“Okay. Okay,” Yang said. He was pacing back and forth a little. “Who else was there, at the party?”

“Everyone.”

“Specifics.”

“I don’t know,” Magdalena said. “I can’t remember. Everyone.”

“Duke Braunschweig?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Marquis Littenheim?”

“Yeah.”

“Marquess Benemunde?”

“Yes…”

“Good.”

“Why?”

“They can be suspects. Alternate possibilities,” Yang said.

“You think you can frame them?”

Yang was silent for a long second.

“What?” Magdalena asked, leaning forward.

“Maybe,” Yang said. His thoughts were moving. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. “I think we can cast enough doubt--”

“But Ingrid did it.”

“I know she did it,” Yang said. “But there are other people who might have wanted to.”

“Why?”

“If Ludwig is dead, there’s no successor to the throne. Braunschweig or Littenheim’s daughters could claim it, or Benemunde could try to bear the kaiser a son. Any of them…” Yang ran his hand through his hair. “There just has to be enough suspicion to muddy the waters.”

“But isn’t it obvious that Ingrid--”

“No,” Yang said. “Not necessarily.”

“Why not?”

“It happened in their quarters in the palace?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s not suspicious that traces of her are on the scene. She lived there.”

“But she--”

“And she has an alibi,” Yang said.

Magdalena froze.

“You said people saw her leaving with you,” he said quietly.

She nodded without speaking.

“If nobody finds him until the morning, that means he could have been killed any time during the night. And Ingrid was here.”

Magdalena brought her hand to her mouth and bit the side of her finger, a muffled and horrified sound coming out of her mouth. 

“You might have to admit it to the kaiser,” Yang said.

“But--”

Yang leaned his head back and closed his eyes. There was pain in his voice as well. “If you admit to this, it’s… A scandal. She’ll have her baby. She would probably be sent to the frontier, but maybe, maybe, we can ask her to be sent to Earth instead, like we planned, and she can get out. Maybe it’s for the best.”

“And what about me?”

Yang shook his head. “I don’t know. It depends.” He was wringing his hands.

“Depends on what?”

“If this is kept quiet or not.”

“Why would it be?”

“If no one can be blamed, maybe it will be called a suicide, just to keep, just to keep…” He shook his head. “The imperial family loves secrets.”

“I’ll be disgraced.”

“It’s better than her being dead, isn’t it?”

Magdalena began to cry. Real tears, sobs. Yang realized, perhaps for the first time, how young she was. “It’s all my fault,” she said. “I ruined everything.”

“It’s not your fault,” Yang said. “It’s not.”

But she was unconsolable. Yang wasn’t sure what to do, so he just let her cry for a few minutes, until she had cried herself out.

“Where is your mother?”

“Visiting her brother,” Magdalena said through the remains of her tears.

“Are you calm enough to make a phone call?”

“To who?”

“You need to speak to Bishop Wasserman,” Yang said. “Explain the changed situation.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“If you won’t call, I will,” Yang said. “I’ll need your phone. I think mine is tapped.” Magdalena shook her head. Yang crouched down in front of her and held her wrists. “Magdalena.”

“What can he do?”

Yang shook his head a little. “If he thinks the situation is bad enough, maybe he could get her off the planet tonight.”

“But the baby--”

“Then the church will have a claimant to the throne in their hands. They might want that.”

Magdalena was shaking a little. “You trust them?”

“If we do nothing, then Ingrid is definitely going to die, and probably you, and probably me. The bishop already knows that we were planning something. Ingrid would probably suggest this herself. He’s the only ally we have, even if I hate the thought.”

Magdalena nodded a little. “Okay. Okay. Okay.” She kept repeating it, as though that would steady her. It didn’t, really, because Yang could still feel the trembling in her hands as he held them.

“Where’s your phone?”

“I’ll get it.” Magdalena stood, with Yang supporting her. She walked a little through the dark house, up the stairs, to her bedroom. It was almost pitch black inside, and Yang could hear the labored breathing of Ingrid, who was asleep on the bed, the dim light from the hallway illuminating her body. Magdalena got her phone from the bedside table, then shut the door behind herself.

“Okay,” she said, still very shaky, and led him back to the kitchen, where among the gleaming counters and neatly lined pots and pans, she leaned both her hands on the edge of the kitchen sink, took a few steadying breaths, and then dialed the contact number she had been given for the Earth church.

It took a long time for anyone to pick up, and when they did, it was obviously not the voice of Bishop Wasserman. It was someone much younger sounding, a man who sounded like he had been roused from a deep sleep, which he probably had.

“Who is this?” the man asked.

“Baroness Westpfale,” Magdalena said. “I was told to call this number if there was a problem.”

“Yes, Baroness. What is the problem?”

“There was an incident at the kaiser’s winter solstice party,” Magdalena said. “Can we talk over the phone?”

“I will send someone to your location.”

“Right…”

“Five minutes.” The man hung up. Yang and Magdalena looked at each other.

“Not so subtle if cars keep coming to your house,” Yang said. “I hope they understand that.”

“Too late now,” Magdalena said. She and Yang waited in the entrance hall, and almost exactly five minutes later, a car pulled into the driveway. One man got out, then the car drove away. Magdalena let him into the house. He was a young man, with plain brown hair and an incongruous button nose above a pinched mouth. He was dressed in a dark winter coat, which he did not take off, even as Magdalena led him into the drawing room.

“What is the problem, Baroness?” he asked.

Magdalena reexplained the situation to this man, including the idea that either Braunschweig, Littenheim, or Benemunde could be framed for the situation, or that perhaps Ingrid could be taken off planet immediately. The man listened without speaking to her whole, rambling, explanation. “Is there anything that you can do?”

“And Frau Goldenbaum is safe here?” he asked. “May I confirm that?”

“She’s sleeping,” Magdalena said, as though that was what the man cared about.

Yang leaned towards her and whispered in her ear, “You need to let him see her.”

Magdalena made a face of disgust. “Yes, you can see her. She’s upstairs. Is there anything you can do?”

“Yes,” the man said. “We can muddy the water, at least.”

“What will you do?”

“The fewer people who know, the safer it is for all,” the man said. Yang realized that they hadn’t even been told his name. He didn’t bother to ask, though. “You can provide an explanation for why Frau Goldenbaum is at your residence?” he asked Magdalena.

She winced a little. “Yes.”

He nodded. “Very well.” He stood from the couch. “Bishop Wasserman thanks you for your trust in us.”

A bitter taste was in Yang’s mouth at that. Magdalena said, “I am grateful for the bishop’s assistance.”

“Indeed. Please show me Frau Goldenbaum.”

Magdalena led the man upstairs to see her, with Yang trailing behind. He watched as the man roughly flipped on Magdalena’s bedroom light, looked Ingrid over, and checked her breathing. He seemed satisfied. “You gave her something to sleep?”

“Yes,” Magdalena said. “She was… upset.”

“I see. Will she be able to compose herself in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“She should wait to leave here until she learns the news. Then there can be an excuse for her distress.”

Magdalena nodded. “Is there anything else you need?” she asked.

“No,” the man said. “This will be taken care of. If the situation changes, call again.”

Magdalena escorted him out. He walked partially down the driveway, into the snow, then a car pulled in from the street. He got in and disappeared.

“They’re probably going to send someone to watch the house,” Yang said. “If they have the resources to…” He trailed off. Suddenly, the exhaustion was hitting him.

“I should enjoy my last night of not living in disgrace,” Magdalena said.

Yang was too tired to joke, or to chastise her for joking. “I should go home.”

“I’ll call my driver to take you.”

* * *

_ December 481 IC, Odin _

Yang’s sleep was anything but peaceful when he returned to his house, and he was woken in the morning by another phone call. Although he was groggy with sleep when he picked up his phone and looked at the screen, he was forced to full consciousness by the name it displayed. Yang took half a second to steady himself before answering, feeling like his blood had turned to ice.

“Commodore Bronner, don’t you know that the day after the solstice, everybody and their mother is bound to be extremely hung over?”

“I’m not in the mood for jokes, Leigh,” Bronner said. “I need you to tell me right now what Baroness Westpfale called you about at two seventeen this morning, and what you did at her house afterward.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Hank von Leigh, I am calling you because I, personally, owe several things to several people. It would upset Cora Feldmann if her husband’s cousin was implicated in something unsavory, and it would upset Rear Admiral Merkatz if you were arrested. I, however, do not care if you go before a firing squad. So, tell me right now what Baroness Westpfale wanted from you, and if you’re going to lie, make it a convincing one.”

“She wanted to sleep with me,” Yang said, trying to sound aggrieved rather than terrified. “Her mother was out of the house, and she was angry that I had refused her invitation to the kaiser’s solstice party, but that’s all. So I went over to her estate, and then she kicked me out of bed and I came back home.”

“I see.”

“I gather she’s in some kind of trouble?”

“I highly advise you keep your nose out of it,” Bronner said.

“Am I in some kind of trouble?”

“You should have been in trouble a long time ago, Leigh.”

“Are you trying to keep my name out of whatever… trouble… is going on?”

“Concerning yourself with what I’m doing is a bad choice,” Bronner said.

“It just seems like you getting involved is outside of the scope of your usual--”

“You are extremely lucky that I am capable of playing many different parts.”

“I see, sir,” Yang said. “Was there anything else you wanted from me?”

“I highly recommend you stay home today, Leigh.”

“Why?”

“And don’t make any more phone calls.”

“And I assume no mail either?”

“Don’t be smart with me.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“What do they have you teaching, over at the IOA?” It was a non-sequitur that startled Yang.

“Military History I and the Ancient Earth elective.”

“Maybe write some lesson plans that you can hand off to the poor sap who takes over the course when you end up in jail.”

“Thanks for the advice, sir,” Yang said, trying to sound sarcastic. “Any other words of wisdom?”

“No.”

“Great. Look, can you maybe not tell everyone that I was sleeping with the baroness? I really don’t want to have her mother get…”

“If the baroness having a low class lover is the worst that comes out of this for her, that is the best of all possible outcomes,” Bronner said.

“And you really can’t tell me what’s going on?”

“I will not.”

“Great.”

“Indeed. I will contact you if I need something else from you.”

“I look forward to it, I guess. “

“Enjoy the rest of your winter holiday, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Thanks, you too,” Yang said, but Bronner had already hung up.

He lay back onto his bed and dropped his phone into the center of his chest, staring up at the ceiling. The room was cold because the fire had gone out in the night, but the sun was shining brightly, and the snow outside the window sent its blinding reflections up into his room.

He stayed in bed for a little more, then got coffee and breakfast from his landladies in the kitchen downstairs, and then rekindled his fire and sat at his desk, shivering. On his computer, he opened up the text of the historical research he had been working on, the construction of a history of the power struggles in the early days of the Goldenbaum dynasty. He hated to stare at it now, hating the feeling that he had somehow been dropped into its pages. 

He scrolled fairly far back, to one of the earliest chapters of the book, where the chapter title, printed in neat italics in an ancient language, seemed to be mocking him.

> **_Chapter Two: Cui Bono?_ **
> 
> _ It is an unfortunate condition of history that we have very little record of Kaiserin Elizabeth’s early life. We know that she was a wealthy woman even before the start of the Goldenbaum Dynasty, and we know that her marriage to Rudolph von Goldenbaum was one of, if not mutual affection, then at least mutual respect. The letters and records between them that have been preserved in the Imperial Archives suggest that Elizabeth was one of the few women Rudolph considered to be intellectually capable. Indeed, before her death of cancer in 30 IC, Elizabeth had, for several years, use of Rudolph’s state seal, and was capable of issuing commands on his behalf. This suggests a level of trust, or at least a public show of trust, that few kaisers have granted to their wives in the years since. _
> 
> _ This is not to say that Kaiserin Elizabeth was Rudolph’s political equal. If, while using his state seal, she had ever opposed him, she would have been immediately stripped of first her position, and then her life. It can perhaps be said that the public trust that Rudolph placed in his wife was his way of signaling that his family, and therefore his children, were also as capable of rulership as he. _
> 
> _ While much can be said of Kaiserin Elizabeth herself, it is her children and descendents who shaped the future of the Goldenbaum Dynasty. While Elizabeth never bore Rudolph a son, something that was a very public disappointment for both of them, she did raise all four of her daughters to wield the same cunning and guile that she herself employed.  _
> 
> _ Elizabeth’s oldest daughter, Katharina, did not grow up expecting to inherit the throne. Instead, she sought to inherit the political legacy of her mother: to marry someone politically ambitious, to set her children up to succeed in the world, and to wield soft power behind the scenes. We know much about Katharina’s personal life and ambitions because, up until the age of twenty-two when she married Joachim von Neue Stauffen, she kept diaries of her daily activities, which are preserved. It is probable that she continued to be an active dairist after her marriage, but it is likely that these records were destroyed upon her death, or locked within Goldenbaum family vaults.  _
> 
> _ What the existing record does show is that Neue Stauffen and Katharina made a political partnership to rival that of Elizabeth and Rudolph. With Katharina’s approval, Neue Stauffen rose quickly through the political ranks under Kaiser Rudolph. By the time that Katharina’s first son was born, Neue Stauffen was second only to the prime minister. It was his position in Rudolph’s close confidence, rather than his official title, that many resented. _
> 
> _ Although Rudolph was growing older, he was still quite vital, and he continued to try to father a son, even after the death of his wife, with his favorite concubine, Magdalena. It is obvious from the public record that he was attempting to sire a son, because in preserved photographs, Magdalena is visibly pregnant several times over the course of years, but never brings a pregnancy to term. It is likely that she was instructed to selectively abort female fetuses. _
> 
> _ It is quite interesting to note that Katharina and Magdalena appeared to be close friends. They are often pictured together at social events, and the two had a shared passion for watching horse races, each sponsoring several horses and riders. Katherina even named one of the horses that she owned Rotruth, after Magdalena’s middle name of Ruth.  _
> 
> _ There is much reason to speculate about the genuine nature of this friendship. Katherina and Magdalena were political rivals. Should Magdalena bear a son, her child would be the heir to the Goldenbaum throne. If she did not, it would be Katherina’s son, Sigismund, who would inherit the throne. Katherina’s motivations for befriending her father’s mistress, younger than herself, may have been to ensure her own political future. _
> 
> _ Magdalena was pregnant once again in 36 IC. This time, unlike the previous pregnancies, she is known to have carried the birth to term, indicating that she was carrying a son. There are no photographs of Magdalena after November of 36 IC. She vanishes completely. _
> 
> _ The lengths that were gone to to erase Magdalena from the historical record give us some indication what happened to her. If she had simply died in childbirth, there would have at least been a funeral, and a body. If the child had died through some fault of hers, there probably would have been an execution. Instead, it is as if Kaiser Rudolph tried to make it so she simply did not exist. It is likely that her child bore some kind of genetic misfortune-- a twisted leg, a cleft palette, a birth defect or disorder. _
> 
> _ Still, this raises further questions. Genetic screening is perfectly capable of detecting most such things in the womb, and Magdalena certainly would have undergone those tests. The medical records of the Goldenbaum family are sealed, of course, but there are other places that we can look for evidence. _
> 
> _ The Odin death records are public, and the palace staff record is available through the imperial archive. Comparing these two records around the time when Magdalena’s son might have been born, we can see that a significant portion of the palace medical staff-- many hired to look after Magdalena specifically-- were killed (probably by forced suicide). The pasts of some of these personnel are interesting to look into, specifically Magdalena’s obstetrician, Dr. Claude Markhossen, and her new lady’s maid, Veronique Barthes. Their employment records show that both were previously members of Katharina’s staff. It is likely that Katharina recommended them to Magdalena specifically, especially the lady’s maid, who was replacing another who had died of suicide four months before Magdalena was supposed to give birth. _
> 
> _ Looking at the  _ Peerage of the Galactic Empire _ and the property records, we see that although Dr. Markhossen died, his wife and children were able to live very comfortably in the capital, owing property, and, during the reign of Sigismund I, his son was elevated to Reichsritter and became Abraham von Markhossen. This seems like quite a reward for the son of a dead doctor. Similarly, we can see that Veronique Barthes’ sister was given property of her own, much more than the sister of a maid (who herself was employed in service) would have been able to afford. _
> 
> _ Through the lens of history, this kind of payment for services rendered seems obvious. It all happened long after the fact, so contemporaries may not have noticed anything other than Katharina taking care of the families of people who had once been faithfully in her employ. However, it is more likely that they remained in her employ up until the moments of their deaths. _
> 
> _ It would be a simple enough matter for a lady’s maid to begin subtly poisoning her mistress. Not enough to cause the woman to feel pain, but certainly enough for the new life inside of her to suffer. Too much or too little of some nutrient can wreak havoc on the development of a baby. If the obstetrician was similarly on Katharina’s payroll, it would also be easy for him to lie about the results of any health testing, to make it seem like all was well with the baby. When the child was born, though, and it was not as perfect as would be expected of the son of the most powerful man in the universe, the mother would be not just disgraced but destroyed, and all the staff associated would be killed to protect the secret. It might buy enough time to prevent Rudolph from fathering a son with another woman. _
> 
> _ By necessity, this is all conjecture about what passed in those few months of 36 IC. The record that exists is incomplete, and there is no way to pry the truth from the lips of the dead. And, even if we could speak to them, they might lie. But we can ask the question: who benefited here? If Kaiser Rudolph had no son, his daughter’s child would inherit, and he did. Joachim von Neue Stauffen became prime minister, and was brutal in protecting his own son’s claim to the throne. What the father was able to do in public, the mother may have done in secret. _
> 
> _ History proceeded on its course, a succession struggle that seemed almost bloodless may have actually involved the blood of several people on Katharina’s hands.  _

The chapter continued, but Yang closed the document. He wished he hadn’t written any of that, wished he hadn’t had it sent to Kaiser Friedrich. It now seemed to be intentionally mocking him, the past. Magdalena. He couldn’t do anything now, though. All he could do was wait. 

* * *

_ December 481 IC, Odin _

The news that Prince Ludwig had died wasn’t released to the public for several days, and, during that time, Yang did not leave his house or speak to anyone. He didn’t hear from Bronner again, but when he poked his head out the window of his room, he saw down the street a car lingering. So, he was being watched, and he was probably meant to know he was being watched. Yang pulled his head back inside and shut the window. 

He worked on his book some. He had been hoping to use his winter vacation from the IOA to do some research, but he couldn’t leave his house to go to the library or the archives, so he spent it instead going back over what he had already researched, compiling all the notes he had put together for one of the later chapters into a coherent whole. It wasn’t easy to collect anything into “the truth” because, he felt, there wasn’t such a thing. But he was able to pick an interpretation of the available records to tell a story. He felt that even more keenly now. And every time he looked up from his work, glancing into the fire or out the window, his thoughts turned towards what the available records would be about Prince Ludwig, and what interpretations someone could make. Video footage of Magdalena and Ingrid leaving the party together. Magdalena calling Yang, and him leaving to go to her estate. Blood all over Ludwig and Ingrid’s bedroom in the palace. He hadn’t seen it, but he could imagine the scene.

Bronner showed up in person at Yang’s apartment after several days, startling his landladies. He told them that he didn’t want to stay long, but he requested that they clear out the kitchen so that he could talk to Yang across the big table. Yang wondered if this was actually because his personal room was bugged and Bronner didn’t want to speak inside of it. It wouldn’t have surprised Yang in the least.

“I assume you’ve heard the news,” Bronner said, steepling his hands. He looked very out of place in the warm and cozy kitchen, his owl-like face and stiff uniform. Although Yang and several of the other tenants of the house were also in the fleet, none of them looked so strange as Bronner did. Perhaps it was because Yang was so used to seeing him in the computer-glow of his office, the juxtaposition of him into this domestic setting was jarring to the point of making Yang feel like he had entered a kind of dream.

“You didn’t tell me I wasn’t allowed to read the news.”

“I don’t have the patience for you today, or any day, Leigh,” Bronner said. He did sound tired.

“Yes, I saw that Ludwig died. How?”

“Stabbed,” Bronner said. “In the ribs.”

“Assassination, I assume?”

“Falling on your own knife is a difficult way to commit suicide,” Bronner said. “Yes.”

“Any suspects?”

“Of a sort.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The palace guards caught someone dressed as staff sneaking out of Neue Sanssouci,” Bronner said. “He killed himself before he could be questioned.”

Yang frowned. “Any motive?”

“He was obviously hired by someone,” Bronner said. “I don’t have any of the details of where they found him, what he was doing, or what else they know about him.”

“You don’t?”

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t be inclined to tell you.”

“I’m not sure why you’re here.”

“Several reasons,” Bronner said.

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“You should be.”

Yang was silent for a moment, staring at the row of copper pots hanging behind Bronner’s head, catching light from the hearth fire and glinting subtly in his vision. “How afraid should I be?”

“The fact that you haven’t been arrested yet is a good sign, is what I’ll say to that.”

“And why should I be arrested?”

“Because I think that you know more than you told me the other night.”

“And have you told anyone else that you think that?”

“I told you some time ago that I am a far better actor than you are.”

“I hope my script is at least better this time.”

“Indeed, Leigh,” Bronner said. “Tell me again what you were doing at Baroness Westpfale’s house.”

“Why does it matter?” Yang asked.

“Because, Leigh, during the night while Prince Ludwig was busy being stabbed, his wife left the palace with Baroness Westpfale and went to her house. It seems very odd that the Baroness would want to sleep with you while she had a guest over herself.”

Yang flinched a little, though he had already known that it would likely be public knowledge that Ingrid had been at Magdalena’s house during the night. “Everyone should know by now that Baroness Westpfale behaves in confusing and strange ways. I don’t think even she understands why she does things.”

“While you were at the Baroness’s house, did you see Frau Goldenbaum?”

“Are you implying that I was sleeping with the Prince’s wife?”

“It stretches the audience’s suspension of disbelief to even think that you would be sleeping with Baroness Westpfale,” Bronner said. “Answer the question.”

“Where is Baroness Westpfale now?”

“Under house arrest.”

“And Frau Goldenbaum?”

“At the palace.”

“You have phrased that very delicately,” Yang said. “Alive?”

“Yes.”

“Free?”

“She has not been free from the moment that she became engaged to Prince Ludwig.”

Yang nodded a little. 

“You continue to not answer my question,” Bronner said. “Did you see Frau Goldenbaum that night?”

“Yes,” Yang said. “I didn’t speak to her, though, and I don’t think she knew that I was there.”

Bronner nodded. “Fine.”

“That’s not an incriminating answer?”

“You think you should be incriminated?”

“I’m trying to figure out if I should have spent the past few days putting together a will.”

“You hardly have any assets,” Bronner said. “And the property of traitors is forfeit to the crown regardless.”

“Fine. Whatever. Did you have something else to ask me?”

“Since you did know Frau Goldenbaum was there, why didn’t you mention it earlier?”

“It had nothing to do with me,” Yang said. “And you didn’t ask.”

Bronner narrowed his eyes. “And why was she there?”

“It’s Baroness Westpfale’s house. Presumably to see her. They’ve been friends since they were schoolgirls together.”

“Friends.”

“From what I know,” Yang said. It was the intonation on ‘friends’ that was obviously meant to catch Yang’s attention. Perhaps Magdalena had confessed. “What is going to happen to her?”

“Baroness Westpfale?” Bronner asked. Yang nodded. “That entirely depends on who is held responsible for Ludwig’s death.”

“She didn’t do it.”

“You sound very sure. She has a motive,” Bronner said.

“Which is what?”

Bronner tilted his head to the side slightly, and stared at Yang with a penetrating expression. “Her relationship with Frau Goldenbaum.”

“Are you going to clarify what you mean by that?”

“I think you know quite well what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“I took it upon myself to look into the baroness’s past,” Bronner said. “It was quite easy to get her schoolteachers to talk.”

“I don’t know anything about her school days.”

“She was involved in quite a scandal,” Bronner said. “The kind of drama that would be too sordid to even put on as a play.”

“Are you going to tell me, or are you going to--”

“It’s not relevant,” Bronner said. “And the whole thing was covered up with large donations to the school. People are willing to keep gossip quiet if there’s money on the line.”

“But not if someone pretending to be an MP shows up at their door?”

Bronner’s smile was thin and grim. “Indeed.”

“Even if what you’re implying is true,” Yang said, though he knew it was, “it’s not enough reason for her to murder the crown prince. She has absolutely nothing to gain.”

“Really?”

“It’s not as though she could…” Yang shook his head. “I don’t need to explain this to you. But I can assure you that Baroness Westpfale did not kill Prince Ludwig.”

“I suppose that brings me to my next reason for being here,” Bronner said.

“Which is?”

“Who did kill Prince Ludwig?”

“Why should I know?”

“You have very strong opinions on who didn’t kill him.”

“Anybody who knows the baroness would have the same strong opinions.”

“I said I was going to make you continue to work for me,” Bronner said. “I want to hear who you think did it. You have spent more time in the palace than I have.”

“Is this because you’re going to try to use this information, or because you’re curious?”

“What does it matter?”

“I don’t want to make a wrong prediction and have it ruin somebody’s life,” Yang said.

“So, you do have opinions.”

“Of course I have opinions,” Yang said.

“Then tell me.”

“You’re making me work above my pay grade.”

Bronner silently waited.

“Have you read my book?”

“How would I have?”

“I assumed you were watching me.”

“I am, but not that closely. Why?”

“It’s all about the succession struggles in the early days of the Goldenbaum dynasty.”

“And what does that have to do with this?”

“The crown prince was murdered,” Yang said. “Throughout history, even before the Goldenbaum dynasty, whenever the next in line for the throne is murdered, or meets an unfortunate end in an accident, it’s usually the person who’s next after that who’s responsible.”

“And you think that’s the case here?”

Yang shrugged. “It’s a little complicated, because there isn’t a clear heir, but if Ludwig took the throne, that would have cut out both Princess Amarie and Princess Christine’s children from inheriting.”

“So, you think it was Duke Braunschweig or Littenheim?”

“It could be,” Yang said. “Or…”

“Or?”

“If Susanna Benemunde had a son with Kaiser Friedrich, that would make her son the heir.”

“Interesting. So, three suspects.”

Yang shrugged. “Any of them are more plausible than Magdalena von Wesptfale, who has nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

“And you’re not just saying that to protect your friend?”

“If I was saying it to protect anybody, it would be myself,” Yang said. “But no, I’m not just saying that to protect her. You can look at any example in history and come to the same conclusion. It was probably just very bad luck on the part of the assassin that the pregnant wife of the prince was out of the house at the time.”

“Which of the three is most likely to have done it?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “I haven’t even met Marquis Littenheim. I don’t have a good judge of his personality.”

“What about Braunschweig?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said again. “I think he is a man who enjoys power, and he would not say no for the chance for his daughter to rule, but I think that Princess Amarie is a generally tempering influence.”

“And Benemunde?”

“I only met her once.”

“And what conclusion did you reach in that meeting?”

“She plays the women’s court game well,” Yang said. “And she does have the kaiser’s favor. She may have believed that his favor would protect her.”

“He would chose his favorite concubine over his own son?”

“I would not presume to speak for His Majesty,” Yang said, unable to keep the slight tone of disrespect out of his voice. Bronner caught that and held up a cautioning finger.

“That’s right, you shouldn’t.”

Yang nodded. “Did you want something else from me?”

“No,” Bronner said.

“What’s going to happen to the Baroness?”

“I have no idea,” Bronner replied. “You already asked that question.”

“I’m just worried.”

“It is understandable to want to protect your friend,” Bronner said. “But don’t stick your neck out too far.”

“Will I be allowed to leave my house now?”

“Wait until the school term begins,” Bronner said.

“Can I make phone calls?”

“To whom?”

“The Mariendorf family.”

“Yes, and no one else.”

“Letters?”

“They will be read.”

“I’m well aware,” Yang said dryly. “I shall try to enjoy my time under house arrest.”

“It’s a soft house arrest,” Bronner said. “There’s no weight behind it. But leaving is more likely to get you in trouble than not.”

“I understand.”

Bronner stood. “Good day, Lieutenant Commander.”

“I’m sure we’ll speak again at some point, Commodore. Thank you for coming.”

“It was my pleasure,” Bronner said, though his tone made it clear that it had been nothing of the sort.

* * *

_ January 482 IC, Odin _

Yang received a letter in his mail that he had not been expecting. The heavy envelope did not contain so much as a request but a summons: a private audience with the kaiser that Yang had not asked for or wanted. It contained a date and a time and the information that someone would escort him to the palace from his house. Yang couldn’t refuse, so, on the day of, he dressed in his best uniform, combed his hair as nicely as he could, and found himself waiting stiffly in one of the rooms of Neue Sanssouci for the kaiser to appear. The room was opulent and dark, with a fire quietly burning in a hearth, and two chairs arranged in front of it. Yang didn’t want to sit down, because he didn’t know if he should be seated when the kaiser arrived.

Friedrich walked in, flanked by two attendants, and Yang bowed as nicely as he could. The kaiser looked in worse health than Yang remembered him being in. Ludwig’s funeral had been the week prior. Yang had not attended, for obvious reasons, but he had watched on television. The entire Goldenbaum family had looked various shades of distraught, and none more so than Ingrid, who had been pale faced and shivering the whole time she had been caught on camera. At the funeral, Friedrich had looked cold and sad. Now, he looked old. He waved his attendants away, and they left, shutting the door behind them, leaving Yang and the kaiser alone in the room. The kaiser sat in one of the chairs, then said, “Take a seat, Lieutenant Commander.”

Yang hurried to comply. Friedrich was stretching out his hands towards the fire, as though they were cold, though the whole room was stiflingly warm. Yang felt like he could barely breathe in his uniform.

“Do you know why I’ve called you here?” the kaiser asked.

“I would not presume to say, even if I had any idea, Your Majesty,” Yang said.

“I read your history,” the kaiser said. “You have a good eye.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Yang said.

“Amarie was right to recommend it to me, though I suspect that she may regret trying to help Baroness Westpfale now.”

“Why is that, sir?” Yang asked, though he suspected that he knew the answer.

“She is a disgrace,” the kaiser said, though he didn’t seem very invested in it. His voice was flat. “You know why.”

“May I ask what is to be done with her, sir?”

“It concerns you, does it?”

“If it did not concern me, would you have called me here?”

“I’m not as concerned with Baroness Westpfale as I am with many other things,” the kaiser said. “But nothing is to be done with her. She shall not return to court, at least not for some time. She should be jailed, perhaps, but it would be too much of a scandal, and it would upset Amarie.”

“You won’t punish her?”

“I have some interest in preserving the dignity of my family,” the kaiser said. “However little of it remains.” Yang wasn’t sure if he was referring to remaining dignity or remaining family members. The kaiser was silent for a long second. “You care about the baroness?”

“Perhaps against my better judgement,” Yang admitted. “But she has been a good friend to me.”

The kaiser nodded. “Is that so?”

“Yes, sir.” The conversation was as stifling as the air in the room. Yang risked asking something else in the moment of silence that followed. “May I ask another question, Your Majesty?”

Friedrich waved his hand in assent, staring into the fire rather than looking at Yang. “What is to be done with Frau Goldenbaum?”

“She should be sent away somewhere, as soon as she has her baby. I have no desire to keep her in the court.”

“Where, sir?”

“She can be granted an estate on a frontier planet,” the kaiser said.

“May I make a request, sir?”

“Oh?”

“Baroness Westpfale said that Frau Goldenbaum was interested in religion,” Yang said. “Perhaps she could be sent to Earth.”

“Earth?”

“She was a member of the Earth church, I believe,” Yang said.

“Ludwig might have said something to that effect, once,” the kaiser said. “If that is her wish, then I have no opposition to it.”

“It will be difficult for her to leave her child.”

“It is better for her to leave him than to stay here in disgrace,” the kaiser said. “He will have a better life without her shadow over him.”

“Is her scandal public knowledge?”

“I think it is better to make a clean break with the past,” the kaiser said. “Even if there were no scandal, a royal child with only a mother from outside the family is a dangerous thing. Better to have him be raised without her influence.”

Yang nodded. There was plenty of historical precedent for that. “Why did you summon me here, sir?”

“You have a perspective that no one else around me has,” he said. “You know the members of the court, and yet you could never be one. I was told that you could be relied upon to give honest assessments of situations.”

“May I inquire who--”

“Several people, independently, when I mentioned your name.”

“I’m honored,” Yang said. “It seems above my station for Your Majesty to have an interest in me.” 

“You have a way of remaining in my mind, Lieutenant Commander. You look odd, and it makes me remember you.”

“I am glad that I am remembered fondly,” Yang said. “I have been lucky to have Your Majesty’s favor.”

Friedrich nodded, pensive. “Perhaps I should not give it so freely.”

“It would be foolish of me to agree with that statement, when I have benefitted so much from it.”

For the first time, Friedrich’s lips twitched in something that might have approached a smile, if such a cloud of misery hadn’t been hanging over him. “Your name is most often mentioned in connection with some sort of trouble, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so, sir.” He had to wonder if the kaiser knew that he had been at Magdalena’s house the night of the murder. He wondered if Bronner had communicated that all the way up the chain. He hoped not, but it was irrelevant now. He had perhaps managed to cast the cloud of suspicion off of himself.

“I wouldn’t have forgotten you, after your little hunting accident. But it’s the fact that you’ve stayed around that makes you interesting.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The kaiser paused for a second. “What should I do about my children, Lieutenant Commander?”

“Sir?”

“You know history. What should I do to stop the rest of them from murdering each other?”

“You think that’s what happened?”

“Do you not think that’s what happened?”

“I don’t have the results of the investigation.”

“It was inconclusive. Intentionally, I’m sure. If one were to look too guilty, it would look far more like a framing than a true kind of guilt.”

“Are you going to punish them?”

“How can I, without proof?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I’m asking for your advice. What should I do with them?”

“Do you have an heir in mind?”

“No.”

Yang thought deeply for a second. “You should refuse to name one,” he said. “At least for a while. If you can carefully balance who you’re showing favor to, that might keep them from killing each other.”

The kaiser nodded. “And I cannot allow Susanna to have a son.”

Yang nodded, silently, and waited for the kaiser to say something else.

“Do you think that I have had a good reign, Lieutenant Commander?”

“In what sense, sir?”

“A historical one,” the kaiser said. “If the Goldenbaum dynasty were to end with me, what would people say in the future?”

“Sir, if we could write the histories of the future today, there would be no need to write histories at all.”

“You can’t say?”

“Your reign has not been marked by scandal or by extreme virtue,” Yang said finally. “If the Goldenbaum dynasty ended with you, people might say that you were emblematic of its stagnation.”

“Thank you for the honest assessment.”

“May I ask why you are thinking about this?”

“I just buried my only son,” the kaiser said. “Is that not reason enough?”

“Yes, sorry, Your Majesty.”

He waved his hand a little in dismissal of Yang’s apology. “Ludwig would have made a dangerous ruler.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He was moved by fits of passion.” He shook his head. “My father was the same. He had both of my brothers and my mother killed because he thought they were scheming against him.”

“Were they, sir?”

“I don’t know. What does the historical record suggest?”

“I would have to make a careful study,” Yang said.

“I don’t want to know, if you do find out,” Friedrich said.

“There’s no…” Yang began, then trailed off.

“There’s no what, Lieutenant Commander?”

“There’s no ‘finding out’,” Yang said finally. “It’s telling a story to fit the information we have, like anything else. You already know the possibilities of the stories I might tell.”

“And what will the story be that they tell about Ludwig?”

“The same one we’re telling now,” Yang said. “Someone else with ambitions for the throne killed him.”

“Even though I’ve blamed the assassination on a republican terrorist cell?”

“I think that everyone will understand that you’re hesitant to blame your own children for fratricide, without credible evidence.” Yang couldn’t keep all of the bitterness out of his tone.

“But you are unhappy with this?”

“The people who took the blame in this case are most likely to be innocent.”

“You have a fondness for republicans, Lieutenant Commander?”

“Your Majesty, why would you ask that question?”

“You spend your free time detailing the failures of the dynasty in your history book. I think it is a fair question.”

“I like to understand the world I live in,” Yang said. “The only thing that separates man from animals is our history. You can’t understand history if you’re only willing to look at the easy parts on the surface.”

“A fair answer.”

“If I may say something,” Yang said.

“Yes.”

“Having Your Majesty’s favor is dangerous to me, but losing it would be worse. I find myself in a difficult position, when you ask me questions like that.”

Friedrich smiled, though it was a somewhat grim expression. “I tried hard not to earn the favor of my father, as well, which meant that I was the only one of my brothers to survive. If I very obviously did not want the throne, I was a safe choice to give it to, in the end.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And where will you end up, Lieutenant Commander?” the kaiser asked. “As a man who does not want to be involved, you are a safe man for me to speak to.”

“I serve at the command of Your Majesty,” Yang said. “As a soldier in your fleet.”

“I thought you told me at one time that you were a servant to all the people in the empire.”

“Are you not their servant as well?”

“I was under the impression that you were attempting to navigate this conversation delicately,” the kaiser said. “You take an interesting view of the crown.”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty.” 

The kaiser was silent for a long time. “For what it is worth, you have my blessing to marry the Baroness Westpfale.”

“Even though she is a disgrace?”

“Those willing to marry into her disgrace will be after her money,” the kaiser said. “You would be better suited than they.”

“Thank you for your blessing, Your Majesty,” Yang said, though he hesitated.

“Is there a problem?”

“I do not know if either of us desire to marry,” Yang said.

“Desire is a funny thing,” the kaiser said, and then nothing else.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“What will become of us, Lieutenant Commander?”

“Who, sir?”

“My family.”

“I don’t know,” Yang said. For the first time, the kaiser turned to look directly at him. “I think that depends on the choices that you make.”

“Perhaps.”

* * *

_ February 482 IC, Odin _

The weather was disgusting and grey, suitable to Magdalena’s mood. She was stomping through the slush of her garden, not caring that the hem of her dress was getting dirty with her splashing. The corner of her shawl caught on the bare twigs of a bush as she walked by, and she ripped it savagely off, shaking down snow. Yang trailed behind her at a safe distance, not wanting to get caught up in her whirlwind.

“They wouldn’t even let me go to the naming ceremony,” Magdalena said. “That’s not fair!”

“I know,” Yang said. “I’m sorry.” That was about the only thing he had been able to say to her for the past several days.

“I should leave the capital,” she said.

“Where would you go?”

“Phezzan, maybe.”

“You wouldn’t like it there.”

“I wouldn’t?”

“I’m just saying that to stop you from doing something stupid,” Yang said. “You don’t want to run away.”

“I do.”

“You just have to wait,” Yang said. “Things will get better.”

“No, they won’t.”

“Why do you think that?”

“What am I supposed to do with myself?” she asked. “The only thing I had--” She shook her head and kicked a pile of snow over.

“This is almost the best possible outcome,” Yang said. “Ingrid is safe, and she’ll be back.”

“Will she?”

“Probably.”

“And will she want to see me when that happens?”

“I can’t predict the future,” Yang said.

“I can’t go to court, I can’t have Ingrid, nobody will associate with me because I’m in disgrace for something that I wasn’t even doing…”

“Well,” Yang said.

“I wasn’t doing it then!”

“True. Look, Maggie,” he said. 

“What?” she demanded. Her tone was vicious.

“I think you will figure out a way to be okay,” he said. “You’ll be allowed back in court eventually, if that’s even what you want. Your mother will convince Princess Amarie or Marquess Benemunde to let you back into their graces.”

“After we got someone to frame them for murder?”

“They don’t know that.”

“What if they find out?”

“Then we’ll have more problems than you not being welcome at court for now.”

Magdalena didn’t say anything. Her face was twisted and bitter.

“It will be okay,” Yang said.

“Stop lying to me.”

“This status quo won’t hold forever,” Yang said. “Because nothing ever does. And in the mean time, you can find other things to live for.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe you should go back to school,” Yang said.

She stomped through a puddle. “All I am is a stupid pretty girl. Good for being an accessory to the court and going to parties. Useful to get married to. That’s all I was ever supposed to be, and now I can’t even do that.”

“You’re not stupid,” Yang said. “You could be more than that.”

“Oh, I am  _ more _ ,” she said. “I’m scandalous and deviant and a disgrace to polite company.”

“Welcome to the club,” Yang muttered. “But it’s not like everybody knows.”

“Enough do. And more than enough know that I’m disgraced by  _ something _ that there will be rumors on rumors.”

“Ignore them.”

She laughed, harshly. “Easy for you to say.”

“You can’t just spend the rest of your life moping,” Yang said. “You have to find some other way to live. Maybe it will be better.”

She was silent for a minute, then changed the topic. “My mother says that you spoke to the kaiser.”

“I did. A while ago.”

“What about?”

“History, mostly.”

“He’s interested in that?”

“I think he’s interested in understanding what his family’s legacy will be. If that’s an interest in history, then sure.”

“Was there anything else that you talked about with him?”

“No,” Yang lied. He wasn’t going to tell her about the kaiser’s weird permission for them to marry.

“Oh.” She sighed. “Why you?”

“Because I’m a nobody,” Yang said. “The same reason you took an interest in me, I think.”

“What would I have done without you, Hank?”

“Survived,” he said. “That’s what you would have done.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“With your life. What are you going to do with it?

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “I like teaching. I think I will keep doing that until someone tells me I can’t anymore.”

“Hmph.”

“What, you think I should do something different?”

“You can go ahead and tell me to have ambitions, but you won’t yourself.”

“My ambition is to have a comfortable and happy life that hurts as few people as possible,” Yang said. “I like to think that I’m doing alright at it.”

“I wish I could have that mindset.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overall, not sure how I feel about this chapter, but it's good to post it and be done haha. 
> 
> The Earth church did a pretty good job at getting someone else to take the blame, but it really does make a lot of sense that someone else would be trying to do a "get my kid on the throne" murder than anything else. see the debate about "who killed the princes in the tower?" who do you think killed them lmao. the person who had the most to gain. anyway, getting rid of prince ludwig is good for a whole lot of people, the earth church included. perhaps it wasn't just a moment of terror that ended up getting ludwig killed. perhaps it was, as magdalena suggested during the last part, some slight brainwashing. we just don't know :) anyway, Ingrid is now safely off to the other side of the galaxy. we shall see her again.
> 
> bronner is really like. so suspicious of yang but cannot actually figure out what yang was up to. he's under the impression that Yang is involved in... something... but probably didn't have anything to do with ludwig's murder. yang very carefully never brings up the idea that ingrid didn't kill ludwig. he's like "magdalena definitely didn't do it" which is true, and sorta derails the entire conversation haha.
> 
> covering up murdering your husband by admitting to your gay affair. it's a pretty convenient excuse, since it looks like the assassin must have been really unlucky that the pregnant wife was out of the house at the time, since she was probably also a target.
> 
> the kaiser is an unceasingly weird man, and magdalena feels like her life has been ruined. understandable, but 
> 
> anyway, this concludes the court politics arc, at least for now. next chapter is something completely different. you all might be a combination of very happy and very angry at me lol. 
> 
> thank you to Lydia for the beta read <3 my original science fiction is @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven , my mystery is @ bit.ly/arcadispark and I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter. see you again soon :)


	10. Siegfried Idyll

_ November 481 IC, Odin _

Siegfried Kircheis was, unfailingly, two things while at school: respectful to his teachers and bored out of his mind. He was the type of fifteen year old who would have been able to do any coursework assigned to him while blindfolded, and any from the years above, as well. But he still did all the assigned work cheerfully, well, and without complaint, and would always help the person sitting next to him complete his. Kircheis was therefore almost universally well liked, and easily the top student in the class at his high school. He was soft-spoken and kind, which might have been used against him if he had not also been two meters tall and the star of the fencing team. 

Today, Kircheis was sitting outside the principal’s office of his high school, having no idea why he had been summoned there. He wasn’t alone, as several other boys in his year were also sitting waiting, and were being called in one by one. In particular, Martin Bufholtz was in the office speaking to the principal now. Some of the other boys had come back out wearing interested or amused expressions, but when Martin emerged, he was scowling. Kircheis caught his eye, and Martin made a gesture that Kircheis interpreted as ‘later’, and then walked out of the waiting area. The principal stepped out.

“Kircheis,” he said. Kircheis stood and went in.

Inside the principal’s office was a man that Kircheis had never seen before-- a man wearing the uniform of an imperial fleet officer. Kircheis wasn’t well versed enough in such things to identify what his rank was, though the mystery was solved when the principal spoke.

“Kircheis, this is Ensign Weber. Ensign, this is the top student in the sophomore class, Siegfried Kircheis.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Kircheis said, shaking hands with the ensign.

“Please, take a seat,” the principal said. Kircheis sat stiffly on the offered chair.

“Now, Kircheis, I’m sure you’re wondering why you’ve been called here. You’re not in any sort of trouble, of course,” the principal said with a laugh. “It’s school policy to counsel all students on their options for their future, and for some especially promising students, we have a few career paths to particularly recommend.”

Kircheis nodded silently. Ensign Weber took over the well-practiced spiel. “By law, all schools which receive public funding report student records,” he said. Kircheis had to wonder which records were being reported, and to who, exactly. But he just nodded again. “Your scores both in class and on imperial standardized tests indicate that you show extreme promise. Have you given much thought to what you want to do with your future?”

“Some,” Kircheis said.

“Do you mind if I ask what you are considering doing after you graduate from here? University, a trade, something else?”

“I would like to attend university,” Kircheis said. “And after that, I might take over my father’s business.”

“Oh, what does your father do?”

“He sells rare plants,” Kircheis said.

“How interesting,” the ensign said, though he didn’t sound interested at all. “You are aware that all men without extenuating circumstances are required to serve in the imperial fleet for two years starting at age twenty, correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Kircheis said. “I am aware.”

“The profile that I have received for you indicates that you would be very successful in a career in the fleet,” Weber said. “Have you ever thought about that?”

“I think everyone thinks about it at some point,” Kircheis said.

Weber smiled slightly. “Of course. The fleet is a very rewarding career for talented young men such as yourself.”

Kircheis wore a polite expression, but he was not swayed by the flattery. He just nodded, which forced Weber to continue.

“Your scores on the Odin Planetary Exam indicate that, if you wished, you could gain entrance to the Imperial Officer’s Academy, or any of the other smaller military schools. That would pay for your higher education in its entirety, and guarantee you a prestigious posting when you graduate. Do you have any interest in this?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’d have to talk to my father.”

The principal spoke up. “Remember, Kircheis, you are responsible for making the best choices for your own life. Part of becoming an adult is learning what is best for yourself, and not relying on your parents to make your choices for you.”

“I understand why you might want to speak with your parents about such a thing,” the ensign said. “But Mr. Creuzburg is correct that it is your decision.” He reached inside his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “I took the liberty of signing you up for the entrance exam,” he said. “Your test-taking fee has been waived in its entirety.” He held the envelope out to Kircheis, who hesitated for a moment before taking it. “I highly recommend that you take the test.”

“I will consider it, sir,” Kircheis said.

“You sound hesitant.”

“It’s very abrupt, to be asked to decide my future right now,” Kircheis said. “I wasn’t expecting to think about it for some time.”

“That is understandable,” the principal said. “But it is worth thinking about early, so that you can seize opportunities as they come.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, can we expect to see you for the test?”

“Do I need to study beforehand?” This was a way to dodge answering the question.

“Brush up on your math,” the ensign said. “I’ve been told that most people find that section both challenging and easy to prepare for.”

Kircheis nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

“Of course,” Ensign Weber said. “I look forward to having you as my peer, someday.”

“Was that all?” Kircheis asked.

“Yes,” the principal said. “You can return to class now.”

Kircheis nodded and left. The rest of the school day, he spent fiddling with the envelope in his pocket, not sure what to do with it. He had complicated thoughts about joining the fleet, and he couldn’t help but picture the disgusted look on Martin’s face when Martin had walked out of the meeting. He caught Martin’s eye a couple times during literature class, the one class they shared. When they walked out of class together, Martin leaned over to him and said, “Can I come over and study at your house this afternoon?”

Kircheis agreed. “You’ll have to leave before my parents get back from work, though.”

“Of course. I’ll find you after last period.”

During his last period, which happened to be gym, Kircheis turned off his thoughts about both Martin and the letter in his uniform pocket as he played several vigorous matches of tennis against his classmates. When he complimented his peers on their hard-fought losses and good games, it was the kind of thing that only he, with his genuine and calm nature, could do without coming off as condescending. He was still damp from his post-gym shower when walked outside, and his wet hair began to freeze in the frigid November air, though there was no snow on the ground at the moment.

He met Martin outside the gates. Martin was short and slender, having not yet finished growing, with long, straight brown hair that fell into his eyes. He and Kircheis had been close for several years. He could be abrasive, but he was intelligent, and his abrasiveness was generally in service of ideals that Kircheis couldn’t help but respect. They had a lot in common, and so their closeness was a natural one.

Martin and Kircheis walked to Kircheis’s house together quickly. As was his custom, when they past the house that had once belonged to the Müsel family, Kircheis glanced up at it, contemplating its empty windows. Martin looked over at it, as well, but didn’t say anything. Kircheis unlocked his own house with the key from underneath the mat. His parents were both out working, and wouldn’t be back for several hours, which was for the best, since neither of them liked Martin very much.

“Want a snack?” Kircheis asked as they stood in the kitchen and took off their winter coats.

“Sure,” Martin said. Kircheis rummaged around in the cupboards for the pack of cookies that he knew his mother always hid in the back, and he brought that with them as they headed up to his attic bedroom. Somehow, it felt more secure to speak to each other in there, rather than in the rest of the house, despite the rest of the house being empty. Kircheis sat down on the bed, but Martin paced around the small bedroom for a second. He had been here many times before, and, as usual, he looked with a little bit of annoyance at the photograph on Kircheis’s desk, the one of Kircheis and the von Müsel siblings, with a lock of blond hair tucked into the bottom of the frame. Martin turned it around before sitting down next to Kircheis on the bed. Kircheis watched this ritual play out with his usual patience.

“Are you still annoyed about your meeting in Creuzburg’s office?” Kircheis asked.

“Are you not?”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Kircheis said. “Does it really upset you that much?”

“Why do they think that I want to work for them?” Martin asked and sat down on the bed next to Kircheis.

“Did they give you one of these too?” Kircheis pulled out the envelope from his pocket and began opening its seal. Martin reached over and tried to tug it out of Kircheis’s hands, but he didn’t let go, and instead continued to open the envelope until he held the test invitation in his hands.

“Yes, and I threw it out immediately. Like you also should.”

“Does it hurt to take the test?” he asked.

“It legitimizes it. And it makes them think that their recruitment scheme is working. That means they’ll send more people into schools to recruit.”

“Even if they did do that, the same number of people would still be in the fleet,” Kircheis pointed out. “Service is compulsory.”

“Not if you’re studying in a university.”

“You have to apply for the exemption, though.”

“I will.”

“Okay,” Kircheis said. He didn’t really want to argue with Martin about it now. He laid back on the bed, his hands underneath his head.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually considering it.”

“I might take the test,” Kircheis said.

“Why?” Although Kircheis had his eyes closed, he could hear the disapproval in Martin’s voice.

“You have money to study at a university without a scholarship,” Kircheis said. “I won’t pretend that my family has money to send me to school.”

“So you’ll take their blood money?”

“My mother’s cousin said that her friend’s son was able to use his admission to the officers’ school to negotiate for a scholarship from another university.”

Martin placed his hand on Kircheis’s chest. “Sieg, do you really think that’s true?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t believe things like that unless I see them for myself.”

“Yeah.” Kircheis didn’t entirely believe the story himself, but it had been worth a try as an excuse. “But it really doesn’t hurt to try. It’s free, and even besides that, I probably won’t get in.”

“I don’t know why you think that.”

“How many thousands of people take that test every year?” Kircheis asked. “The school is only so big. It would be conceited of me to believe that I must get in.”

Martin’s hand traced over Kirches’s shoulder. “I don’t think it would be conceited.”

Kircheis wanted to switch the subject. “You said you wanted to study?”

“Have you finished your lit essay?”

“Yeah,” Kircheis said.

“Can we trade? It’d be nice if you could look mine over.”

“Of course,” Kircheis said, and sat up to retrieve his backpack front he floor. He opened his computer, found his essay, and traded with Martin. He read through quickly, making a couple notes in the document as he went. “You’re being pretty bold here,” Kircheis said. “Is that wise?”

“I don’t care if Stevenson gives me a bad grade. I’m not going to give an opinion that I don’t think is correct.”

“Okay,” Kircheis said. “Your choice.”

“Yours is fine,” Martin said. “But you have the opposite problem from me. I don’t think anyone’s going to report me to the police for my opinions about  _ Beowulf _ . You could stand to be a little more outspoken.”

“You have an interpretation that’s barely supported by the text,” Kircheis said. “Is there any evidence that the slave stole the cup specifically to anger the dragon into destroying the country?”

“I can make whatever arguments I like,” Martin said. “But if you were a slave, why would you risk sneaking into the dragon’s lair? A single cup wouldn’t improve your station in life any. But if you knew you could anger the dragon into possibly destroying the whole system that kept you enslaved, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe,” Kircheis said. “But it didn’t work.”

“He killed the king.”

Kircheis smiled a little. “True.”

Martin leaned towards him. “We still live in an era of kings, but without great beasts to slay them for us.”

“Dangerous talk,” Kircheis said. “You should be careful.”

“Are you going to report me?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?” Kircheis said with a smile. “But wouldn’t I be implicated as well?”

“Hmm,” Martin said. “What a conundrum.” He put his hand on Kircheis’s face and the two leaned together to kiss.

* * *

_ February 482 IC, Odin _

His mother was making dinner in the kitchen, but she had called him in to help out. Kircheis was more than willing to set the table, but, as it turned out, his mother had been attempting to corner him in a conversation. Although he was much taller than she was, he was a little shy and deferent around her, never wanting to upset her if he could help it.

He was pulling the plates out of the cupboard when she said, “You got a letter in the mail today.”

“Really?” Kircheis asked. 

“You should open it.” She pulled the letter in question from her pocket. Kircheis could see the imperial fleet markings on it. He quickly went to put the plates on the table before taking it from her. “Do you know what this is about?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“What?”

“I took the entrance exam to the Imperial Officers’ Academy a few months ago. I was given a test fee waiver.”

“You didn’t tell me about that.”

“I didn’t think anything would come of it. This is probably a rejection letter.” Kircheis wasn’t sure that was true. He had felt confident walking out of the exam; it had gone well, he thought.

“Why did you take it?”

“You said that you had heard that people could leverage admission into the officers’ school as a way to get a scholarship elsewhere.”

His mother sighed. “Sieg, please don’t worry about money.”

“Mom, don’t worry about me worrying.” He smiled.

“Well, open that envelope, see what it says.” She wiped her hands on her apron.

Kircheis gently opened the envelope and pulled out the sheet of paper that was inside. He read it with a growing feeling of tension within his gut.

“Well?” she asked.

“I got in,” he said, then folded the letter and tucked it into his pocket.

His mother’s face twisted a little bit, in what Kircheis interpreted as fear disguised as unhappiness. “Congratulations,” she said. “Was that all it said?”

Kircheis hesitated. “It also said how I had done compared to the other test-takers.”

“Did you do well?”

“I suppose,” Kircheis said. “It doesn’t matter. I told you that I only took it to use as a bargaining chip.”

“How well, exactly?” his mother asked. “I at least want to know, so that I can brag to my friends.”

Kircheis smiled a little. “Mom…”

“Come on, tell me. I only have one son, that’s only one chance to brag about all your accomplishments.”

“First,” he said after a second. “I got first.”

She was washing her hands in the sink when he said this, and there was a long moment where the only sound in the kitchen was the running water. When she turned around to look at him, she was smiling, but it was a tight smile. “You ‘suppose’ you did well,” she said.

“Mom, please, I don’t want--”

“I know, Sieg,” she said. “You should tell your father when he comes back in.” His father was out working in the greenhouse. “He’ll be very proud of you.”

Kircheis smiled a little, which was a deflection more than anything. He went to finish setting the table.

When his father did come back in to the house, all three of them sat down to eat dinner. It was a quiet meal, and Kircheis found himself unusually captivated by the flower-patterned tablecloth, the same one that had been on the table all throughout his childhood. He stared down at it, looking at the faded places where stains hadn’t quite been scrubbed out, feeling weirdly melancholy. He didn’t look at his father, and though his mother kept trying to catch his eye to get him to mention the letter in his pocket, Kircheis said nothing. His father didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong, making easy chatter about new plants he had imported for his store, and if Kircheis was excited for the upcoming district fencing championship. His father thought that their high school team had a good chance of doing well enough in the district to make it to the regional level competition, as they had come close the year before, but Kircheis wasn’t so sure. 

After dinner, he silently helped put away the leftovers and clear the table. His father was watching television in the next room, so his mother didn’t bring the subject of his admission letter back up, even though she clearly wanted to talk about it. Kircheis wasn’t sure why exactly he hadn’t mentioned it at dinner. It was the same complex feeling that had caused him to take the test and not mention that he had taken the test, the one that sent him back upstairs to his bedroom, to lay on his too-short bed and stare up at the beams of the ceiling, tugging the blanket over himself as he listened to the winter wind buffet the building.

Why had he taken the test? Because he knew he would regret it if he didn’t.

Why would he regret it? Because it would feel like throwing something away.

Throwing what away? An opportunity? Of a kind.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Kircheis took it out and looked at his message-- it was from Martin, of course. He was the only person who ever texted him, aside from his mother. The message was mundane, just Martin inquiring about what Kircheis was planning to do over the weekend, and if they could take a trip into the city, but Kircheis didn’t want to respond at the moment. He couldn’t tell Martin about the letter, either. Martin had known he had taken the test, and had expressed his disapproval about it vociferously, but after it was done had never brought it up again. Kircheis didn’t want to say anything about it and restart that argument.

Kircheis rolled onto his side, finding himself staring at the photograph that had a permanent position on his desk. It had been several years since had last seen the other subjects of the photograph, Reinhard and Annerose von Müsel, but they occupied an overly large space in his memory. There were many reasons for this: the intense bond they had shared over the brief years that they had known each other, the tender secret of his first true love, and the shock of their sudden parting had all worked together to cement the image of the ten-year-old Reinhard firmly in Kircheis’s brain, more than most people would remember their childhood best friend. 

Every moment that the two had spent alone together seemed to occupy a dreamlike place in Kircheis’s memory. When Reinhard had vanished from his life as suddenly has he had come, his absence had felt like a gaping wound, physical in the way that Kircheis would glance at his empty chair during class, hoping that the other boy would be there and finding it empty. For some time, he had hated to walk through town and see the places where he had sometimes stood with Reinhard: the bench at the train station where they had sat with their backpacks under their feet, the park where they had laid in the grass and read, the turgid section of the creek where they had gone swimming in the summers. He had been afraid to look at the empty house next door. Slowly, those feelings had faded, and now it was only the most potent memories that commanded such respect-of-place. He knew he would never go to the waterfall in the protected forest again, because he hated the thought of it existing outside of the memory of that last time they had gone camping together.

If he closed his eyes, he could vividly picture the last few things that Reinhard had said to him. He had demanded that Kircheis join the imperial fleet, in order to gain enough power to overthrow the kaiser. At the time, Kircheis had taken it deadly seriously, but as years passed, he realized that Reinhard was not coming back, and the “plan” that they had constructed there in the woods was nothing more than a childish fantasy born out of panic and desperation. They had both wanted to feel in control of lives that were so totally out of their control, as Reinhard was being whisked away across the galaxy. It had just been something to say.

But, even still, Kircheis hated the thought of breaking a promise, and the idea of abandoning that future that had shone so brightly, even if for just a moment.

He was still staring at the photograph when his mother knocked on his bedroom door. Kircheis got up and let her in. She had come up with the pretense of giving him his clean laundry, but when she shut the door behind herself, Kircheis knew she was here to fuss.

“Why didn’t you tell your father about your test result?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Kircheis said. “I didn’t want to upset anybody.”

“Why would your father be upset?”

“You are.”

She sighed a little and put the laundry basket down on the ground. “I’m very proud of you.”

“I know you would prefer if I didn’t join the fleet,” Kircheis said. Before he was born, he knew his uncle Markus had died during his compulsory service.

His mother shook her head. “I don’t have much of a choice, even if I did have a preference. I want you to have the brightest future you can.”

Kircheis glanced out the window, saw the moon rising over the old von Müsel house. “Is that in the fleet?”

“I don’t know. But I know that I will love and support you, whatever you decide to do with your life. I don’t want you to think that I don’t approve of you making your own choices.”

“I know, mom,” Kircheis said with a smile. “Thank you.”

“Do you want me to tell your father for you?”

“I can do it. I just need some time to think about what I am going to do.”

“I understand.” She patted his arm, then hugged him. “I am proud of you.”

Kircheis returned the hug. She released him and turned to go, but Kircheis saw an opportunity. “Oh, mom,” he said.

She stopped and looked at him.

“Can I go into the city with Martin this weekend?”

Her face twisted again. “To do what?”

“I think he wants to see a play.” Actually, Kircheis had no idea what Martin wanted to do in the city, but that was what they usually did when they went to the city, so it was a safe enough lie.

“Fine,” his mother said. “You have money?”

“Yes, ma’m.”

She smiled a little. “Then I suppose I don’t have a problem with you going.”

“Why don’t you like Martin?” Kircheis asked, feeling bold for a second.

“Did I ever say that I didn’t? He’s a very smart boy. Probably will make a fine scholar.”

“But you don’t like him.”

She pursed her lips. “It just surprises me that you are friends with him, is all. He doesn’t seem like the type of person that you would like.”

Kircheis had no idea what she meant by that. “Just because he’s not athletic?”

She laughed a little. “Bookish is one thing. He’s nothing like the Müsel boy you used to hang out with.”

“They’re more similar than you might think,” he said. “Martin is a good person. I wish you did like him.”

“You’re very sweet,” she said after a second. “It’s kind of you.”

“I’m not friends with him out of charity.”

“I know. If you were, I’d almost understand that better.”

“He doesn’t need charity. He has more friends than I do.”

“That can’t be true,” his mother protested. “All of your classmates speak very highly of you.”

Kircheis hated the direction this conversation had gone in, and he wished he had never broached the topic. “I’m good at making pleasant acquaintances, mom. I have very few close friends. That’s why I wish you would be nicer to Martin.”

“Alright, alright,” she said. “I simply don’t understand what you see in him.”

“He’s a good person, and a good friend,” Kircheis said. “That’s all.”

* * *

“What did you want to go into the city for?” Kircheis asked, sitting with Martin on the train, wedged up against the cold window. Martin had his backpack on his lap, and when Kircheis had offered to carry it, he had discovered that it was quite heavy. He had asked what was in it, and Martin had declined to respond.

“I need to bring this stuff to some friends of mine, and I figured you might want to meet them.”

“You have friends in the city?”

“Of course,” Martin said. “I met them online.”

“Oh, makes sense. Have you seen them in person before?”

Martin gave him a look. “Would I be bringing you with me if I hadn’t?”

“Maybe you are bringing me along for protection.”

Martin laughed a little. “I don’t need you to fight for me, Sieg.”

Kircheis just smiled and looked out the window as the train rattled along. They made it to the city eventually. It was raining outside, so both of them pulled the hoods of their raincoats up over their heads, and Kircheis followed Martin down the city streets. All the lights were on, even though it was the middle of the day, and the usual people who would be out on the streets were all taking shelter from the cold and the rain indoors, so the whole scene had an eerie feeling to it, one that made Kircheis walk closely behind Martin’s shoulder.

Martin seemed to know where he was going, though, and they walked about three-quarters of a mile away from the train station, away from the commercial district and towards a more residential area, where brown brick buildings a few stories high lined the streets, interspersed with narrow alleyways and a few planted trees near the road, all bare now. They walked up to one of the houses, entered the alleyway to the side, wandered around the back, and walked down a couple steps where he walked on a nondescript door leading to a basement.

There was a long silence. Martin leaned on the side of the entryway while Kircheis stood awkwardly at the top of the steps. 

“Who’s there?” someone finally asked from inside the building, a woman’s voice.

“It’s Martin, and the friend I told you I was bringing,” he said. “You gonna let me in, or do we have to stand out in the rain all day?”

The door swung open. There was a girl with frizzy brown hair inside, probably older than Kircheis by five or six years. Kircheis, whose main exposure to women was through his mother’s social circle and the brief interactions with the students at the girls’ high school next door, wasn’t sure what to make of this creature. She was wearing pants and a vest, which was unusual, and she had what looked like splashes of paint all over her hands and face. “Hey, Martin, good to see you again.” She stepped aside so that they could come in. “Who’s the beanstalk you’ve brought with you?”

“This is Siegfried,” Martin said. “He’s good.”

The room that they entered smelled bad, like mold, mostly, but was well lit. Battered furniture of various types littered a bare concrete floor, and the walls were plastered with posters and scribbly looking paintings. Kircheis looked around as he shook the woman’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

“I’m Leisel,” she said. “Make yourself at home.”

“Is anybody else around?” Martin asked.

“Nah,” Leisel said. “They’re out.”

“Doing?”

“You know. Stuff.”

“You don’t have to keep secrets from me,” Martin protested. Leisel raised an eyebrow and looked at Kircheis. “I told you, he’s good.”

“Look, Martin, that’s great. But the fact of the matter is, I’m not gonna tell you shit. You’re like, twelve.”

“Fifteen.”

“Whoo.” She fished around in her pocket, pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. She stood at the side of the room, where a big industrial fan was, and she kicked it on with her toe. Kircheis wasn’t sure what the point of smoking next to the fan was, since it didn’t vent to outside in any way, but it seemed to be Leisel’s ritual.

Martin tossed his coat onto the back of a chair, then sat down on one of the couches. “Any idea when they’ll be back?”

“Not a clue,” she said, taking a drag of her cigarette. “Are you planning on waiting around?”

Martin glanced at Kircheis. “When do you need to get home?”

“I told my mom we were seeing a play,” he said. “Late.”

“Sure, we can wait around,” Martin said. He pulled his backpack onto his lap and opened it. Kircheis stood behind him to look at what was inside. “I brought those copies you wanted.” From his bag, he pulled out several full reams of paper, each wrapped in a plastic bag to protect them from moisture and rubber banded together to keep the pages from flying loose. 

“Lemme see,” Leisel said. She came over and examined the sheets of paper. Kircheis only could somewhat read what they said, since the print was small and sideways, like each page was meant to be folded in half to form part of a book. “You couldn’t even fold them for us?”

“They wouldn’t fit in my bag if I did,” Martin said. “Besides, Mikhail told me not to bother trying to assemble them.”

“You shouldn’t listen to a single thing he says,” Leisel said, walking away. She went to the side of the room where a rickety looking desk stood and rifled through one of the drawers for a stapler. “If you’re going to be here all afternoon, you might as well make yourself useful.” She threw the stapler across the room underhanded. Martin saw it coming, tried to reach up to catch it, but didn’t quite manage. While he was reaching for it, all his papers fell off his lap and to the floor. Kircheis managed to catch the stapler before it hit Martin’s head, and he held it out silently as he waited for Martin to gather up all the fallen things. 

“You staple,” Leisel said, pointing at Martin. “You fold.” She pointed at Kircheis. “I’ll assemble.”

They sat themselves down on the couch, with the giant stacks of paper on the coffee table in front of them, and got to work. As Kircheis folded, he read snippets of the pamphlet they were putting together. “What is this about?” he asked. 

“Generally, or in specifics?” Leisel asked.

“Either,” Kircheis said.

“Didn’t Martin tell you anything?”

“No.”

“Good boy, Martin,” Leisel said, then patted Martin on the head as though he were an unruly puppy. Martin looked somewhat chagrined. “But to answer your question, we do some creative writing around here. We distribute information about how one could  _ hypothetically _ avoid getting conscripted into the fleet, or how  _ allegedly _ certain individuals are responsible for horrific war crimes, and  _ theoretically  _ where those people are stationed, and  _ possibly _ what could be done about them.”

“Oh,” Kircheis said, and looked down at the pamphlet in his hand.

“This is an example of the former,” Leisel said, holding up a packet that Martin had just finished stapling together. “Here. Avoid conscription in ten easy steps.” She tucked the little booklet into the front pocket of Kircheis’s shirt, and he looked down at it, his own hands still busy folding other sheets of paper.

“Er, thanks,” he said.

They put together pamphlets for several hours, talking a little bit as they did. Kircheis didn’t say much, but he listened to Leisel and Martin. Martin seemed happier here than he usually was while at school, and he kept glancing at Kircheis, as though looking for some kind of approval. Kircheis smiled when he did. He thought Leisel was interesting, from the way she spoke, but he didn’t think he was getting the full picture of her. He learned a little bit more about what they were doing here. All the people who lived or worked out of this basement commune were anarchists, or something close to it, who had a little club. Mostly, they seemed to be interested in vandalizing fleet property, but Leisel described her proudest moment, which had been saving a woman from being apprehended by the Imperial Military Police, where Leisel said she might have died.

As time passed, Martin kept glancing at his watch. “When is everybody else getting back?”

“If I knew the answer, I would tell you,” Leisel said. She got up to make some coffee. Kircheis just kept steadily folding papers until all the reams of paper seemed to diminish into nothing. 

It was growing late when “everybody else” returned. They came in in a dramatic fashion, a group of four young men, all probably in their twenties, one supported on the shoulders of two others, bleeding from his face-- Kircheis couldn’t tell if it was a nosebleed or a wound elsewhere, the blood was just pouring and dribbling in such a stream that covered the man’s front almost completely. Kircheis stood up when the door pounded open, and his first instinct was to help, but Leisel practically shoved him aside in her haste to get to them.

“What happened?” she asked. 

The one who had free hands answered, while the other two dragged the third over to one of the couches and laid him down. “We got jumped.”

“By?”

“Too dark to tell.”

“Were you followed back?”

“I think we lost them.”

“You think?” Leisel’s voice was somewhat hysterical. “You know you’re not-- if you’re followed you can’t come back here!”

“And what else were we supposed to do with him?” He pointed at the injured man, who was rolling onto his side and half coughing, half spitting great gobs of blood onto the concrete floor. Kircheis found some paper towels in the kitchenette and brought them over, handing them to one of the men, who took them without really processing who Kircheis was.

“If it’s bad, drop him at the hospital,” Leisel said. “I don’t know what you think that I can do for him.”

“You’re a nurse, aren’t you?”

She shook her head, clearly frustrated.

Martin was watching the scene with a kind of horror dawning on his face. “Is Mikhail alright?” he asked one of the others.

“He’ll be fine.” This was one of the two who had dragged him in, and he was wiping off the bleeding Mikhail’s face, revealing that the blood was coming from mouth and nose simultaneously.

“Hey, Martin,” the only one who hadn’t spoken yet said. “You should probably clear out of here.”

“I want to help,” Martin protested. “And so does my friend, Sieg.” Kircheis was frozen for a second at the mention of his name, then nodded a little. The three unwounded men glanced at him, as if noticing his presence as a stranger for the first time.

“Johan’s right,” Leisel said, returning to the room with a first aid kit in hand. “You should scram. These idiots might have been followed, and I don’t want you to get arrested if the house gets--” She broke off and shook her head. Leisel passed the first aid kit to Johan and grabbed Martin’s shoulder, shoving him towards a door in the back of the room. He stumbled forward. Kircheis followed after him. “Take the upstairs exit. Go home. Don’t come back until I contact you, not the other way around.”

“But--”

“Don’t argue with me,” Leisel said. “You’re not useful if you get yourself trapped. Out.” She didn’t wait for Martin to protest more, and yanked open the door, leading to a dark set of stairs. Martin tried to say something else, but Leisel was pushing him forward, and then Kircheis followed after him, and Leisel slammed the door shut behind, trapping them in the stairway with no way to go but out.

“Let’s just go back to the train station,” Kircheis said.

Martin was frowning, barely visible in the gloom of the stairway. Kircheis prodded him forward. “You’re going to say we have to leave too?”

“She’s not going to let you back in. Come on. I’m sure it will be fine, but we should go home.”

Martin took a few steps up the creaking stairs, then paused, then continued, hesitation clear in every move he made. They got to the top of the steps and arrived in a hallway, with a more solid staircase leading upwards towards other apartments in the building, and then the front door. Kircheis peeked through the blinds on the door, which revealed nothing but the near pitch-blackness of the rainy night outside. But he didn’t see any people, so he felt fine about walking out, after he and Martin had fastened their raincoats as securely as possible.

The rain beat down on them, freezing cold, as soon as they left the building, and their shoes were soaked through with the first huge puddle at the bottom of the steps. Kircheis continued to look around warily. This was not the first time he had felt this on edge in the city, and it reminded him strongly of that last trip he had taken with Reinhard, the one where they had been followed by someone after Annerose. Kircheis kept glancing behind him as they walked, but didn’t see anything in the darkness, and couldn’t hear any footsteps over the splashing of the rain. He relaxed a little after they had gone about a quarter of a mile, feeling like anybody who was going to be following them would have shown themselves already. They ducked into a corner store for a second, welcoming the warmth and the bright lights. Kircheis bought them both candy bars and cups of bad coffee, which they lingered under the shop’s awning and consumed. Martin looked grim.

“You okay?” Kircheis asked.

“Obviously not,” Martin said. He crumpled the wrapper from his candy bar and stuck it in his pocket.

“I think Mikhail will be okay,” Kircheis said. “It looked unpleasant but not dangerous.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Martin said. “I feel like I should go back.”

“Martin.” He put his hand on Martin’s skinny arm. “There’s nothing that you could do if you did. I’m sure Leisel wouldn’t even let you in the door.”

“I just want to look.”

“Look?”

“To see if they were followed.”

“I don’t think that would help.”

“I won’t be able to sleep at night if I don’t--” Martin began. He cut himself off, then started walking down the street, back the way they came. “You can go back to the train station if you want.”

“You think I would leave you behind?”

“Why shouldn’t you? You don’t owe them anything.”

“Martin,” Kircheis said again, then followed after him, somewhat reluctantly. He felt like they were making a mistake, but he wasn’t going to abandon Martin, and Martin couldn’t let go of the idea of going back to the little safehouse, so back they were headed. Kircheis checked his own watch several times, mentally consulting the train schedule to see when they would be able to get back home, if all of this went smoothly.

They walked slowly and carefully back, Martin always a few steps ahead, despite Kircheis’s longer legs. They stopped a block away from the house, looking down the street cautiously. As soon as they turned the corner, Kircheis felt immediately that something was wrong. He grabbed Martin’s shoulder. “Look,” he said under his breath. Down the street, there was a van waiting. Its engine was on, as evidenced by the occasional flick of the windshield wipers across the window, but all its lights were off. Whoever was sitting in the driver’s seat was hidden behind the fog in the windows.

Martin nodded. “They’re watching the building?”

“I don’t know.”

“What should we do?”

“Do you have your friends’ number? Can you call them?”

“No, we don’t-- I was told not to phone them.”

“Any way to contact them?”

Martin shook his head. “Not quickly.”

“We can’t just stand here,” Kircheis said, and then pulled Martin back around the corner. He didn’t resist, but he did try to crane his neck to peek back around at the van and the house. “They probably know they’re being watched. They’re probably looking out the windows right now,” he said, partly trying to reassure Martin, partly trying to work through the situation himself. “It might make it worse for us to do anything.”

“What if they don’t know they’re being watched?” Martin asked.

“Then…” Kircheis trailed off. He wanted to warn them, but walking up to the building seemed almost suicidal. 

“I want to at least find out who that is.”

“Is there any question?”

“Who do you think it is?”

Kircheis stuck his head around the corner again, taking another look at the van, still idling on the side of the road. “I’ve only seen that make of car in a few places,” he said. “I think it’s government issue. It’s got-- the front grill looks weird-- you can see the reinforcement.”

Martin nodded again, his sodden hair flopping into his eyes. “Okay. I want to warn them.” His voice was firm, and Kircheis didn’t think he could dissuade Martin from this idea.

“Okay,” Kircheis said. “Here’s what we’re going to do.” He leaned around the corner again, though he thought that he should probably stop doing that, as they were probably visible from the parked car. “I’m going to go up to the house, through the back, and try to tell them that they’re being watched. They might have an escape plan in place already. They probably do.” Kircheis suspected that they would probably use the roof-- the buildings in this area were close enough that a reasonably athletic person could take a running jump from one to the next with little danger, and every building had a little hutch for roof access. In the summer, Kircheis had often seen people hanging their laundry out to dry up on the roofs, or planting little box gardens.

“You’re going to go?” Martin asked.

“I’m faster than you are, in case I need to run.”

“They’re my friends,” Martin said. “What if they don’t trust you?”

“One of us needs to stay away, just in case the other is arrested. You need to be able to get my parents--”

“I want to do it.”

“Flip a coin,” Kircheis said. “I don’t think we have time to argue.”

Martin fished through his pocket for a coin, came up with one, flipped it in the air, and said, “Swords.” He lifted his other hand to reveal the coin on the back of his right hand. “Damn. Scales.”

“Okay, I’m going,” Kircheis said. “If anything happens, take the train home, call my parents. Don’t follow me. Got it?” Martin looked like he was about to argue. “Martin, promise me.”

“Fine,” Martin said. Kircheis nodded and smiled, a small, reassuring expression. “Stay safe.”

“I will,” Kircheis said. “You too.”

He walked around the corner, leaving Martin behind, suddenly feeling very alone. He strode quickly down the street, took a turn into the alley, then took the few steps down towards the basement apartment and knocked on the door. There was no response. He waited a second, tension growing in his stomach, then knocked again. There was still no answer from inside the door. He tried the door. The handle turned, but the door wouldn’t open; it must have been deadbolted shut. Kircheis knocked again, then tried to softly call out, “Leisel, open the door.”

Still, there was no answer.

The best case scenario was that they had already left, of their own volition, before whoever was watching them came.

The next scenario was that they were all hiding inside, refusing to open the door to anyone.

The worst scenario was that they had already been taken, and the people watching the house were just trying to see if anyone else would show up. If that was the case, Kircheis knew he had just walked himself into a trap.

He turned to go, making his way up the few steps, clinging to the rail to stop himself from slipping on the wet steps. When he was most of the way up, he saw the thing that he most dreaded in the entry to the alleyway, several figures, all coming directly towards him. Some of them were clearly armed. 

Kircheis made a split second decision. He tried to run, leaping up the last few steps, splashing through the puddles, knocking heavily past the trash cans, and trying to escape behind the building. He was fast, but he couldn’t outrun someone who was already ahead of him, another person appearing from what felt like out of nowhere and blocking his path. Kircheis looked around and thought about leaping for the fire escape, but it was too far away, so instead he tried to run past the solitary man in this alleyway, throwing his arm out to knock him sideways as he tried to run past.

He heard the whine of a blaster, but his movements were erratic enough that the shot missed him. His ducking and weaving slowed him down, though, and someone tackled him from behind, landing heavily on his back. Kircheis was knocked off balance and his knees hit the alley ground, and then there was someone forcing his head to the ground, the disgusting and wet asphalt digging into his cheek. He was not treated gently, and got a boot in his side for his trouble, but at least no one was trying outright to kill him, at least not after that missed blaster shot. He stopped struggling, because he was sure there was no way of getting out of this. Someone handcuffed him. Someone dragged him roughly to his feet and shoved him out of the alley. He couldn’t see the faces of the police in the dark.

When they led him to the van and forced him roughly into the back, Kircheis resisted the urge to look down the street for Martin. He didn’t want to accidentally give him away, though he was sure Martin was watching. He hoped that he was keeping his promise, to run back to the train station, to go home, to alert Kircheis’s parents.

He was the only prisoner in the back of the van. He couldn’t check his watch for the time, but he sat in the back of the van for what felt like hours, hands cuffed behind his back, alone, in the dark, just waiting for something else to happen. The only thing that changed about his surroundings was that the drumming of rain on the roof eventually quieted from a roar to a patter. Finally, it must have been time for a shift change or something, because the van started to move.

He tried to make a mental map of where the van was headed, based on the feeling of it starting and stopping, and the taking of turns that wrenched his body away from his hands, hooked to the side of the van. His shoulders ached, and several times his head slammed into the metal wall of the vehicle, on particularly nasty starts. He had to wonder if it was on purpose. Was it a technique to get him to talk later, keeping him in this brief period of solitary confinement? He couldn’t help but think about where the others were-- Leisel and Mikhail and Johan and the others whose names he didn’t even know.

When someone finally opened the back doors of the van and hauled Kircheis out, he was surprised to find that an eerie dawn was breaking, and the air was cold and clear. He didn’t have long to appreciate it, though, because he was marched inside a brick building, surrounded on all sides by tall barbed-wire fence. He couldn’t even see the buildings of the city; they must be a decent distance away from the city limits, or the bare trees outside the fences were just particularly thick. 

Inside, uniformed man after uniformed man seemed to want to have something to do with him. He was asked his name and other identifying information, which he provided, and he was searched. One man found the pamphlet that Leisel had tucked into his shirt pocket, and Kircheis tried not to grimace as the guard looked it over, then filed it away in a plastic bag with a look of cruel amusement. 

They took away his clothes and gave him a grey jumpsuit. He hadn’t been allowed to use the bathroom, and he hadn’t eaten, drank, or slept.

Someone interrogated him, in a cold, too-bright room, with his hands chained to his chair. 

“State your name for the record,” the man said in a flat voice.

“Siegfried Kircheis.”

“Date of birth?”

“April 12, 467.”

They went through other standard questions, such as his address, occupation, family members, et cetera, and then moved on to the real meat of the interview, the man leaning forward over the table.

“What was your business at 622 42nd St?”

“I was visiting some acquaintances,” Kircheis said.

“Who, in particular?”

“I don’t actually know their names.”

“I find that hard to believe.” The man wrote something down on the clipboard he had in front of him. Or, perhaps he didn’t, and that was maybe there to intimidate Kircheis. He wasn’t exactly intimidated, but he was concerned. He didn’t know what was going to happen to him. He could very well be tortured for information that he didn’t have, or sent to a prison colony, or simply killed outright. He had heard rumors of all of these things happening, though as with all such rumors, it was impossible to actually know if they were true. He suspected he was about to find out.

He hoped Martin was alright.

“Are you listening to me?” the man asked.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Are you aware that several of the residents of that building have been charged with treason against the crown?”

“No, sir,” Kircheis said.

“Are you saying that you are unaware that they were charged?”

“I was unaware that they were treasonous, sir.”

“And yet you were found holding written material that was also found within their property, written material which encourages desertion from His Majesty's armed forces.”

Kircheis stayed silent. There was no point in protesting this.

“Do you deny it?”

“I don’t deny that I was carrying a paper, sir.”

“And for what purpose were you carrying such propaganda?”

“It was just given to me,” Kircheis said. “I hadn’t read it.”

“I see. So, it was given to you by the residents there, who you didn’t know, but you must have met beforehand in order to receive it from them, and then you went to their residence? For a chat?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you meet them?”

“Online.”

“Where online?”

“On anonymous message boards. We talked.” He wanted to avoid bringing up Martin.

“The specific addresses, if you would.” 

Kircheis named a couple websites, popular ones. They kept asking him questions. Kircheis wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that he had no real information to give them. When they asked for things that might have implicated Martin, he lied to cover up, but in other areas, he just told the truth, which was that he knew basically nothing. He wasn’t sure if the man believed it, but he did have the fact that he was only fifteen on his side. Even though he was tall, he still had a young face, and his ID, which had been in his pocket and confiscated when he had been searched, corroborated his birthdate. He was hoping that would let him off easy.

Eventually, the man who was questioning him seemed to get bored, though Kircheis suspected this was just a front, perhaps to catch him off guard, and he was sent into a tiny holding cell, one with just a cot and a toilet and sink. It was a miserable little place, and he was reluctant to sleep. He lay on the cot and stared up at the grey concrete ceiling above him, trying to listen down the hallway for sounds of anyone coming. 

At one point, he was given food, which he ate because he was hungry. No one told him what was going on. There was no way to mark the passage of time. He wondered if Martin had contacted his parents. They were probably worried about him by now.

He couldn’t help but fall asleep eventually. He woke up and paced his cell. Someone brought more food. 

How long was he going to be kept? He hated the lack of sense of time. He somehow doubted he would be making it back to school on Monday. He was going to miss his physics exam. 

It might have been a full day later by the time that anyone came to see him. Two guards came and cuffed him and escorted him out of his cell through the hallways, past unmarked room after unmarked room. The whole experience felt like the scenery had been intentionally designed to be reminiscent of the twisting, unending corridors of nightmares, but his escort seemed to know exactly where they were going.

Finally, they made it to a set of double doors, wooden ones, that looked strangely out of place with the concrete and metal decor of the rest of the building. Kircheis was alternately pushed and pulled inside, though he wasn’t resisting.

The room was some kind of small courtroom, with a chair for him to sit on as the accused, and then, above him, behind a desk on a raised platform, the judge’s seat. There were small sections for the audience (none), and the guards stood at the back of the room. The judge wasn’t there yet. Kircheis’s handcuffs were attached to his chair, though there was some length of chain that at least allowed him to stand or sit.

“Rise for the Honorable Judge Elsner!” one of the guards at the forward door said as the judge walked in. He was wearing a fleet uniform, an MP’s uniform. Kircheis rose, his hands catching on the chain that kept him tied down. A court transcriptionist and various other officials followed the judge in and took their seats at the front of the room.

The judge was probably in his forties, and he seemed bored, not really even looking at Kircheis as he took his seat.

“This session of the Odin 53rd District Imperial Court of Internal Inquiry is now in session,” he said. “Please be seated.”

Kircheis sat.

“Siegfried Kircheis, you are hereby accused of the following: two counts of conspiracy to commit treason, one count of criminal association, one count of possession of treasonous materials, one count of untruthfulness towards the crown, and one count of resisting arrest. How do you plead?”

Kircheis stood to answer. “Not guilty, sir.”

The judge didn’t seem shocked by this, but he did seem annoyed. “Do you have a defense prepared?”

“I haven’t had the charges explained to me, sir,” Kircheis said.

“It was a yes or no question.”

“No, sir.”

“Do you wish to speak on behalf of your own defense, or would you prefer that I consider existing evidence only?”

“I would like to speak,” Kircheis said. It probably went without saying that he would not be afforded any lawyer or other defense.

“Very well. We will proceed down the list of charges. Bailiff, please read the text of count one.”

The bailiff did so. “Siegfried Kircheis, you are charged with conspiracy to commit treason. On the eighth of February, His Majesty's year 482, you were apprehended at the residence of criminals implicated in a treasonous plot to wound His Majesty’s armed forces. When apprehended, you were carrying materials that indicated you were involved in this plot. Evidence one.” The bailiff pointed to a table, where the pamphlet that had been taken from Kircheis was sealed inside a bag.

“What do you say in your defense?”

“I had only just met the group there,” Kircheis said. “Do you have a transcript of my interview?”

“Bailiff?”

“Evidence six.”

“That’s what I said then, and it’s still true,” Kircheis said. “I wasn’t involved in anything that they were doing.”

“But you did know them,” the judge said.

“May I plea this down to guilty on the count of criminal association?” The two charges sounded similar, but Kircheis definitely wanted to avoid being charged with anything related to ‘treason’ in its name.

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen, sir.”

The judge considered him for a second. “Fine. I pronounce you not guilty on the first charge of conspiracy to commit treason, guilty on one count of criminal association. Bailiff, read the second charge.”

“Siegfried Kircheis, you are charged with conspiracy to commit treason. On the eighth of February, His Majesty's year 482, treasonous written material was found inside the building at 622 42nd St. Fingerprints on that material were identified as belonging to Siegfried Kircheis. Evidence two and three.”

“What do you say in your defense?”

“I was just helping to assemble them,” Kircheis said. “I didn’t write the text, and I didn’t know any of it was treasonous.”

“I have a character witness sitting outside this courtroom who claims to know that you are not a stupid man,” the judge said. “Try that one again.”

“I hadn’t read it closely at the time,” Kircheis said. His heart beat a little faster at the thought that a character witness had appeared to vouch for him. He desperately hoped that it wasn’t Martin. It might have been his parents. “I know that dodging conscription is illegal, depending on how you do it, but I didn’t know it was treason.”

“And were you planning to dodge mandatory service?”

“No, sir.”

“Really?”

“I was planning to apply for an exemption at university,” Kircheis said. “But that is legal.”

“I see,” the judge said. “But you are sympathetic to their cause.”

“Sir, my feelings seem to be less important than the material evidence of my fingerprints.”

“Herr Kircheis, I advise you to answer this question seriously. Are you sympathetic to their cause?”

He didn’t like to lie, but there was something in the judge’s tone, the way that he had so readily agreed to Kircheis’s offer to plea, perhaps he was trying to let Kircheis off easily. Maybe it was because Kircheis was only fifteen, not even a legal adult until the following year. “No, sir,” he said.

“Good. What did you do to assemble the booklets? How much responsibility for them did you have?”

“I folded the paper, sir.”

“And why did you do that?”

“It was in exchange for a cup of coffee, sir.” This was almost true. They had drank coffee while assembling the booklets.

“Do you know what the intended purpose of the material was?”

He was tempted to say that they were books, obviously they were going to be passed out, but then he remembered that this man was attempting to let him off the hook. “No, sir. It was described to me as simply a creative writing exercise.”

“I see.” The judge drummed his fingers. “So, you folded papers without reading them, because you were bribed into it with a cup of coffee, believing them to be part of someone’s art project. Am I correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you never intended to distribute them?”

“No, sir. If I had, I would have taken more than one copy with me, when I left.”

“Hm, good point. Why did you keep that one copy?”

“Because it was given to me as a gift. I couldn’t throw it away.”

“I see,” the judge said. “It’s a fascinating story here, Herr Kircheis. Do you have anything else to say for yourself before I pronounce judgement on this charge?”

“The charge is conspiracy to commit treason. I didn’t believe the pamphlets were treasonous, so it would be impossible for me to conspire to something I didn’t realize was happening.”

“Hmmm.” The judge glanced at his watch. “Fine. Then I pronounce you not guilty on the second charge of conspiracy to commit treason.”

Kircheis relaxed fractionally.

“We already covered criminal association… Possession of treasonous materials. Bailiff, read the charge, if you would.”

“Siegfried Kircheis, you are charged with possession of treasonous materials. On the eighth of February, His Majesty's year 482, treasonous written material was found on your person. Evidence one.” 

“Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

“I did not believe the material to be treasonous, at the time.”

“But you see the error of your ways?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You pled not guilty earlier, would you like to revise that plea?”

“If ignorance of the law and ignorance of the charges laid against me is no excuse, then I would like to plead guilty. If it is sufficient excuse, then I would be grateful for Your Honor to consider me not guilty.”

“Can I tell you something, Herr Kircheis?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I have already decided what your sentence will be.”

Kircheis wasn’t surprised by this at all. This whole thing was a series of hoops to jump through, he suspected. Maybe in other cases, this would be more involved, but Kircheis bet that the other members of the group who had been arrested did say that they had no idea who Kircheis was, and he really hadn’t  _ done _ anything. It was the association, more than anything, that was likely to earn him a trip to a prison colony. At least no one seemed like they were about to sentence him to death. He might be lucky that he had just gotten a judge who was in a good mood. “I understand, sir,” Kircheis said.

“Then I pronounce you not guilty on the charge of possession of treasonous material.”

That was something of a relief. All the ‘treason’ charges had been dropped, though Kircheis suspected the lesser ones would stick. “Thank you, sir.”

“Bailiff, read the charge of untruthfulness.”

“Siegfried Kircheis, you are charged with untruthfulness towards the crown. On the ninth of February, His Majesty's year 482, you claimed to have no knowledge of the names of the members of the group residing at 622 42nd Street. However, on the eighth of February, His Majesty’s year 482, you wer heard to name one of the residents of that house.”

“Do you have a defense?”

“I didn’t know their family names. And I also thought that Leisel might be a code name.”

“Fine. Not guilty on untruthfulness towards the crown. Bailiff, read the charge for resisting arrest.”

“Siegfried Kircheis, you are charged with resisting arrest. On the eighth of February, His Majesty's year 482, you were stopped by members of the Imperial Military Police. One was wounded during the altercation.”

“Do you have a defense?”

“No, sir,” Kircheis said.

“Guilty on the count of resisting arrest, then.” The judge looked up at one of the guards. “Let the character witness in to hear the sentencing.”

Kircheis craned his neck to look behind him when the door opened. It was his mother coming in, dressed in her most austere dress, her eyes red with tears, her hands clasped before her. The guard let her sit down in one of the benches.

“Your mother presented quite the strong case for leniency for you,” the judge said. “It was unusual that she knew where to find you, since Internal Inquiry procedures are not public at all.” He shook his head a little bit, then cleared his throat. “Siegfried Kircheis, the court finds you not guilty on two charges of conspiracy to commit treason, one charge of possession of treasonous materials, and one count of untruthfulness towards the crown. The court finds you guilty on one count of criminal association, and one count of resisting arrest. Do you have any final statements you wish to make before sentencing?”

“No, sir,” Kircheis said. He resisted the urge to look behind him at his mother, but he could hear her stifled breathing, as though she was holding her hand over her mouth.

“Siegfried Kircheis,” the judge said, sounding very bored. “As punishment for one count of criminal association, and one count of resisting arrest, this court sentences you to ten years of labor.”

His mother let out a choked cry behind him.

Kircheis stood very still.

“This sentence will be commuted until August of His Majesty’s year 482, at which time, the sentence will be served out as four years of attendance at the Imperial Officer’s Academy, followed by six years of service within the imperial fleet. Is this understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“As these charges were laid against you as a minor, they shall be wiped from your record upon the conclusion of your sentence. If, at any time during your sentence, you break the terms of your your sentence, or are found guilty of any other crime, you shall serve out the remainder of your sentence in imprisonment. Is this clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

The judge nodded once, sharply. “I sincerely hope that I do not see you again, Herr Kircheis.” The judge stood. “This session of the Odin 53rd District Imperial Court of Internal Inquiry is concluded.”

“All rise!” one of the guards yelled as the judge left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Serious things first: You've probably been seeing news about the racist murder of George Floyd, and the ongoing worldwide protests against police brutality. I highly encourage you all, if you haven't already, to go donate to a bail fund, a Black Lives Matter group, or (where I personally donated to) split a donation across several different bail funds/relevant charities https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd . If you are attending a protest in your area, please stay safe. 
> 
> On to chattily discussing the chapter: I suspect that some of you are probably very angry right now lmao.
> 
> Martin Bufholtz is a man who shows up in one (1) gaiden episode (in HBSHBL), flirts with Kircheis, insults Reinhard, and then dies offscreen. And yet, I think he's very interesting. Kircheis is experiencing the phenomenon known as "dating the only other gay guy in your high school." 
> 
> this plotline was thought up long before racism and police brutality was the biggest item in the news (I think I was mentioning it to Lydia back before the rona was even A Big Deal here, or maybe it was early into the rona times, either way, it was ages ago). it's awkward that it's so timely >.>
> 
> Kircheis gets off easy because his mother came in to plead his case, had a lot of compelling character evidence (the IOA admission), Kircheis hadn't actually done anything and everybody knew that, and when the other people who were arrested were questioned about him they were like "literally who is that kid. bet he's an undercover cop anyway". so he got off easy easy. the others, not so much. except for Martin, who is totally unscathed except for mentally. oh, and also Kircheis's parents hate him even more now. 
> 
> My policy for character names in narration is generally "use the name that they're referred to by most often in the OVA". There are some edge cases, like Fredrica-- she gets almost equal Fredrica/Greenhill references, I think. In cases like those, I defer to the level of formality that the POV character is thinking of them by. Kircheis and Yang, although those are last names, it's pretty clear that that is the most common way they are referred to in the OVA, so even if they think of themselves as Siegfried and Wenli, it's less confusing to have them not referred to that in the text lol. Is this a bad policy? maybe haha
> 
> I don't know if you actually "enjoyed" this chapter, but I hope you found it interesting at least lol.
> 
> Thank you to Lydia for the beta read <3 original science fiction @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven , mystery novel @ bit.ly/arcadispark . I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter. see ya soon


	11. Meeting a Man of Twists and Turns

_ February 482 IC, Odin _

The ride home in his mother’s car was the most awkward of Kircheis’s life. His mother was quietly sniffling, and Kircheis was tempted to ask if he could take over the drive, because he wasn’t sure if her mind was completely on the road in front of them, but then again, he wasn’t in much better of a state. The ride home was long, as apparently the place that Kircheis had been held was far outside the city, in the opposite direction from his house. 

She pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store, about half a mile from their house, circled round the back, to where no other cars were in sight, and parked. It was late afternoon, and the sun was already setting. His mother rested her head on the steering wheel of the car for a second.

“Tell me what’s going on, Sieg,” she said. “Please.”

Kircheis shook his head. “I got caught up in something-- I didn’t-- Saturday was the first time I ever…” He trailed off, unable to explain. 

“Martin got you involved in terrorism.”

“No, mom,” Kircheis said. His mother was staring out the windshield of the parked car. The heat was on too high, and he was sweating. “I wasn’t involved, and it wasn’t terrorism.”

“What is it, then?”

“It was just, some friends of Martin’s. They’re against the war. All I did was fold some pamphlets.”

“Folding pamphlets does not almost get someone sentenced to life in a prison camp on the frontier, Siegfried!” Her hands were white on the wheel.

“Mom, it’s alright.”

“It’s not alright!”

He knew that was true, but he still wished that he could get her to calm down. Tentatively, he reached out and patted her shoulder. She sobbed a little bit. “I’m okay, mom.”

“Martin rang our doorbell in the middle of the night. You don’t understand how that feels, as your mother, to think that my only son-- you could have been dead.” She tried to steady herself. “I had to pay bribes. To find you. I had to beg that judge to let you free. And that was for doing  _ nothing _ . What if it had been something, Siegfried? What then?”

Kircheis silently shook his head. He didn’t have a response. He could say that it wouldn’t happen again, but he didn’t think that would be a comfort to her. 

“Why did you let Martin drag you into this?” she asked suddenly, her voice sharper. “I knew he was bad for you.”

“Martin didn’t drag me,” Kircheis said. “Be upset at me, but don’t blame him.”

“Don’t defend him.”

“He’s my friend,” Kircheis said, voice firm. 

“I don’t want you to see him.”

“Mom!”

“Can’t you see that he’s corrupting you?”

“Corrupting me?” Kircheis asked, startled.

“He’s not right. Everyone can see it except you. I don’t want you spending time with him.”

“I don’t understand,” Kircheis said. “Are you accusing me of something? Something other than this?”

She turned away from him completely. “Deny it. Please deny it.”

Kircheis was silent. His mother’s breathing was ragged. He looked out at the fading afternoon light outside the car. When he didn’t say anything, she sat up straight and started the car, angrily driving them back out of the parking lot towards their house. When they arrived, she reached inside her pocket and pulled out the ripped envelope that held Kircheis’s acceptance to the IOA. Bitterly, she said, “Here. This piece of paper saved your life.”

He hesitated for a second, then took it. She stepped out of the car, leaving Kircheis alone for a minute. He stared at his reflection in the window, barely visible in the twilight. “What have you done, Siegfried?” he whispered to himself.

* * *

The next day, Kircheis went to school. It was difficult to pretend like nothing had changed, that nothing was wrong, during his classes. He spoke to the principal briefly and expressed that he would be leaving school early to attend the IOA. The principal was overjoyed, wanting to brag about Kircheis’s acceptance to the rest of the student body, hold up their model student as an example, but Kircheis begged him not to. His acceptance to the IOA felt like a mistake, and his upcoming attendance felt like a shame. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

Martin caught his eye in the cafeteria at lunch, though when he first caught sight of Kircheis he looked as though he had seen a ghost. Kircheis jerked his head and the two of them left the cafeteria, then met up in the hallway. Kircheis, feeling fairly bold, walked swiftly through the empty hallways of the school, towards the entrance to the gym, and then out through the back door towards the woods. There was a spot out there that was easy to escape to, where a lot of students went to skip class and smoke. It was cold out, and neither of them were wearing their jackets, so they couldn’t stay out for long, but all Kircheis wanted to do was have a quick talk in private before lunch ended.

“Sieg--” Martin began, once they made it to the spot, down in a little depression in the ground circled by thick pines. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Kircheis said. “I’m fine.” He sat down on one of the rocks that littered the depression, his hands dangling against the ice cold stone.

“What happened?” Martin asked.

As succinctly as he could, Kircheis explained everything that happened to him after getting separated. Martin listened intently, staring at Kircheis as though he were trying to memorize the story, like he would be quizzed on it later. When Kircheis got to the part of the story where his sentence was announced, he paused.

“They just let you go?” Martin asked.

“Not exactly,” Kircheis said. “I… My mother paid some bribes, I think, to get me a lesser sentence.”

“I didn’t think the Imperial government was in the business of assigning community service.”

Kircheis pulled the IOA acceptance letter out of his pocket. He handed it to Martin, whose already pale face grew even paler as he read. “The sentence was labor,” Kircheis said. “Four years at school, then six in the fleet.”

“Could you have refused?”

“Refused?” Kircheis asked. “You think this is worse than the alternative?”

Martin shook his head. “Are you going to go through with it?”

“Martin-- I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“What kind of choice do you think I have?”

“You could defect.”

Kircheis admitted to himself that the thought froze him for a second, filled him with a certain kind of longing. But then he shook his head. “That takes money, and connections, and if I was caught--”

“But you don’t want to be a soldier.”

He looked down at his hands. “Maybe in four years I can escape,” Kircheis said. “It doesn’t hurt to go to school.”

“It doesn’t?”

“I don’t have to hurt anyone as a student.”

“It’s legitimizing it, though, going along with what they want.” Martin scuffed the ground with his foot.

“So is just living here,” Kircheis said. “But we can’t all leave.”

“Reinhard von Müsel did.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“It was different, Martin. He has nothing to do with this.”

“Fine.”

“Not everybody can leave. Some people have to stay here and try to change things for the better.”

“Yeah, and when they do, they get arrested and shipped off to labor camps on the frontier,” Martin said, suddenly very angry. He turned away from Kircheis, hands balled into fists.

“Martin,” Kircheis said, standing. He put his hand gently on Martin’s shoulder, and Martin tensed up, clearly trying to stifle the outward expression of his feelings, be they anger or sadness or something else entirely. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Martin said. “Don’t.”

“Are you alright?”

“No,” Martin said. Kircheis squeezed his shoulder a little, and Martin turned towards him. Kircheis put his chin on top of Martin’s head as Martin leaned onto his chest. After a second, he said, “Gods, I’m so glad you’re alive. I would have-- if you were dead…”

“It’s okay,” Kircheis said. He kept saying it, though it didn’t make it true. “I’m so sorry about everybody.”

Martin shook his head a little, hair tickling Kircheis’s throat. He was silent, but he wrapped his arms around Kircheis tightly. Kircheis winced a little.

“Ow, careful, I think I cracked a rib,” Kircheis said.

“What?” Martin asked, dropping his hands, alarmed.

“When they kicked me,” Kircheis said. “While I was being arrested.”

“Gods, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Kircheis said. “It’s not that bad.”

“Let me see,” Martin said. Kircheis obligingly untucked and hiked up his school uniform shirt, showing Martin the blossoming black and purple bruise on his left side. Martin cringed sympathetically at the sight, then reached out and gently touched it. Kircheis stood still and let him.

“I should have gone instead,” Martin said, still with his fingers moving slowly over Kircheis’s side. Kircheis shook his head and grabbed Martin’s hand, dropping his shirt back down.

“I’m glad it wasn’t you,” Kircheis said. “We should go back inside before the end of lunch.”

Martin looked up at him. “You should be angry with me.”

“Like you are with me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” Martin said, entangling his fingers with Kircheis’s. “I am mad, but not at you.”

Kircheis smiled a little. “I’m glad.”

“I won’t let this happen again.”

“I’m not sure it’s something you can prevent.”

Martin scowled a little. “I will try, at least. When I do things, I swear I’ll be careful.”

Kircheis squeezed his hand. “I know.” He tugged Martin forward a little, and together they pushed their way through the thick trees, beginning to head back towards the school. “My mother doesn’t want me to see you anymore,” Kircheis said, almost idly, though it had been on his mind through their entire conversation.

“She hates me.”

“She suspects us.”

“I didn’t say anything to her.”

Kircheis shook his head as they silently walked through the trees, hand in hand.

“Are you going to stop seeing me?” Martin asked.

“We’ll have to be more cautious,” Kircheis said. “That’s all.”

Martin nodded. “Okay.” Before they pressed through the final bunch of trees that separated them from the school, where they could hear the bell ringing, signalling the end of lunch, Martin stopped abruptly. “I love you, Sieg.”

Kircheis smiled. Perhaps uncomplicated was the wrong word for it, but Martin was a bright spot in his life, perhaps the only one. He glanced around, making sure that they were still invisible from the perspective of the school building, and leaned forward to kiss Martin, running his hand through his hair, feeling his solidity and warmth.

* * *

_ August 482 IC, Odin _

His mother had cried when she had dropped him off at school. Kircheis had felt uncomfortable, but had tried to comfort her as best he could. He thought that maybe she should have been more relieved. After all, she could not possibly have forgotten that this was the least of all punishments he could have possibly gotten. It was hardly a punishment at all. 

He was grateful to find that the rooms were all singles. Perhaps it was due to the high numbers of nobles that enrolled in the IOA, people who were not accustomed to sharing anything. It wasn’t that Kircheis would have been opposed to having a roommate, in theory, but he suspected that, in practice, he wasn’t about go get along with many of the other students here. He didn’t think that they would have much in common. He spent his first afternoon at the school arranging his room the way he liked it. He had, without his mother seeing, gotten a picture printed of himself and Martin, taken on one of the last days of high school. He placed this photograph on his wall, above the little desk. The photograph of himself, Reinhard, and Annerose sat on the desk, as usual. He had to wonder if Reinhard would be happy that he was keeping his promise, albeit accidentally.

In the evening, there was a convocation dinner for all the new students, so Kircheis put on his uniform for the first time, felt how hot it was in the still stifling air of the Odin summer, and made his way across campus, watching his fellow new students stream towards the hall. He realized that he, and all of his classmates, were being watched: upperclassmen, identifiable by the fact that they weren’t walking in the same direction, were leaning on the sides of buildings, watching them, or sticking their heads out from their dorm room windows to see the parade of freshmen go by. They weren’t hostile, exactly, but there was a definite curiosity and judgement present in the looks.

That same curiosity and judgement was present in the looks of his fellow classmates, as well, but there was more of a direct sense of competition there. Kircheis tried to blend in with the crowd, but he was very tall, and when he entered the dark hall, he found that seating had been assigned by class rank, so it was impossible for people to ignore him. Before the dinner began, he tried to make polite conversation with the people at the front table, those directly below him in rank, but found it was difficult. This was nothing like his high school, where any resentment towards him being at the top of the class was tempered by his classmates having known him their entire lives. All of these other boys were total strangers, and they had no reason to think he “deserved” the number one spot.

Privately, Kircheis didn’t think he deserved it either.

Up at the front of the room, staff were trickling in to take their seats at their tables. Kircheis looked them over, trying to guess which ones would be his professors. They all looked somewhat austere, dressed in their fleet uniforms. It seemed that, based on their ages and ranks, teaching positions were something that people took a step or two before retirement. The modal rank seemed to be captain, but a few of the oldest staff members were flag officers.

After a few minutes of this, the head of the IOA came in, called everyone to attention, and began a speech. Kircheis paid attention, but his eyes were continuing to wander around the room. He noticed that there was an empty seat at the staff table, and he wondered who was missing. As the chancellor, von Steger, was saying something about, “The shining path to victory that you all will walk someday,” the question of which staff member was missing was answered.

A slightly unkempt looking man of average height slipped in through the back and tried to make his way, as unobtrusively as possible, towards his seat. He wasn’t successful at this, because a good number of the staff looked over to see what the commotion was, and the grimace on his face made it clear that he knew he had been observed. He was younger than all of the other staff by a huge margin-- he couldn’t have been more than twenty five-- and he was only a lieutenant commander. That was nothing compared to the fact that he was obviously not from the Empire. Kircheis had never met anyone who looked like him, only ever seeing that kind of face shape in history textbooks and the occasional movie made on Phezzan. Was he a defector from the FPA?

Von Steger’s speech continued. Kircheis couldn’t help but continue to look at the man, who was fiddling with something on his lap. The man next to him, a captain, leaned over and whispered something in his ear. The lieutenant commander smiled a little bit, but stopped looking so agitated. 

It didn’t take much longer after that for von Steger to conclude his speech and the whole room to raise glasses in a toast towards the Empire and their future. Kircheis glanced at the staff table once again during the toast, and saw that the odd-looking lieutenant commander was watching the table where Kircheis was sitting with an odd expression, a tiny, weird smile. In fact, he was looking directly at Kircheis.

Kircheis was confused by the stare, but met the man’s eyes, and, for whatever reason, his smile was suddenly more genuine and wider. Kircheis didn’t smile back, but he did raise his glass in his direction. “Prosit!” he said along with the crowd.

* * *

Kircheis’s first day of classes was normal, and he didn’t see the mysterious lieutenant commander again. He was quickly becoming acclimated to the atmosphere of the school, for better or for worse. He could recognize at a glance who were upperclassmen and who were underclassmen, and he was doing his best to put names to faces for the members of the freshmen class. His schedule was full, but thus far his classes had seemed interesting. He had signed up for the strategic warfare program because it had been recommended to him, and apparently that same recommendation had been made to all of the top students of the class, because they followed each other around from class to class in a pack. They hadn’t known each other long enough to form a tight knit group, and there was an obvious feeling of competition between them, so Kircheis had no idea if they were all going to end up as friends. He rather doubted it.

It was on Tuesday when the next hint of strangeness crept into Kircheis’s life. He was walking out of the cafeteria after lunch, passing by the front gates of the IOA, when he saw a rather strange sight. A boy was standing, with his hands on his hips, demanding that the student guarding the gates direct him to “Professor Hank von Leigh.” As Kircheis got close enough to overhear the argument, he realized that the young person, who he estimated was about thirteen or so, was not a boy after all, but a girl wearing pants. She had on a blazer from a private girl’s school, but the pants were mismatched, as though she had discarded the skirt that accompanied the uniform and switched out for her own personal fashion.

“I have an important message for the professor from my father,” the girl said.

“And who is your father?” the student on gate duty asked, looking amused.

“Count Mariendorf,” the girl responded.

“And does Count Mariendorf not know how to use a telephone, or send a message?”

“Just tell me where I can find him.”

“I’m afraid girls aren’t allowed on campus. Dangerous, you see.” Kircheis didn’t think this was a real rule, or, at least not in the sense that the gate guard student was trying to apply it. From the girl’s deep frown, it was clear that the gate guard was clearly just trying to rile her up for his own amusement. Kircheis decided to step in.

“Pardon me,” Kircheis said, stepping up to the gate, “but I have Military History with von Leigh this next hour. I’d be happy to escort, er, Fraulien Mariendorf there.”

The gate guard looked at him with an expression of disdain. “And you know where that is, freshman?”

“I’m sure I can find it,” Kircheis said.

The girl seemed to decide that her chances with Kircheis as a willing escort were far better than continuing to argue with the gate guard, so she ran a couple steps forward, out of the guard’s arm range and into campus.

“What’s your name, freshman?” the guard asked. “If she causes any trouble, you’re going to be reported.”

“Siegfried Kircheis,” he said. “I’m sure there won’t be any problems.” The girl had the right strategy, he thought, so he followed her back into campus before the gate guard could say anything else.

“Thank you for the escort, Cadet Kircheis,” the girl said. “Do you know where Professor von Leigh is?”

Kircheis consulted his schedule on his phone. “Helsheim building, room 105.” He began to walk in that direction. He was worried that he would need to slow down his pace so that the short Mariendorf girl would be able to keep up with his long strides, but she jogged along next to him energetically, her backpack thumping on her back. “May I ask what urgent business you have with the professor?”

“No, you may not,” she said.

“Er, okay,” Kircheis said. “Right over here.”

They were getting some odd looks as they traversed campus. Kircheis tried to ignore it and just focus on arriving at their destination. The day was hot, but inside the Helsheim building was cool and dark, filled with wood panelling and linoleum that looked like it hadn’t been updated in about half a century. Kircheis held open the door to the lecture hall to allow Mariendorf in.

“Oh, he’s not here yet,” she said, not sounding all that disappointed. The lecture hall had a few students in it, but this didn’t bother Mariendorf, and she chose a seat near the front, opened her backpack, and took out a notebook and a pen. Kircheis noticed inside the bag the skirt that she had apparently divested herself of before arriving here. The pages she flipped past in the notebook were labeled with headers like “Vocabulary, Week 1” and “Lab safety intro quiz notes.” Middle school work.

“Do you want me to take a message for him?” Kircheis asked, standing next to her.

“Oh, no,” she said. She smiled at him. “Thank you again for the escort, Cadet Kircheis. I really do appreciate it.”

“No problem,” he said, though he was more confused than ever at this point. He took a seat a few spots away from her, not wanting to crowd, and took out his own notebook. More and more students trickled in, the large lecture hall eventually filling almost completely. This class was a requirement for all freshmen, so it wasn’t surprising that there were so many people here. Kircheis checked the time.

At exactly the moment the clock ticked the hour over, the door near the front of the lecture hall opened, and in strode the man who had been late to the convocation dinner earlier in the week. Up close, Kircheis could see that he was good looking, in a loose and floppy kind of way, and he walked with a kind of unassuming gait, as though he were surprised that all of the students were here to listen to him. 

“Welcome to Military History I,” Leigh said. He fished a remote control out of his pocket and turned on the projector with it before clambering up to sit cross legged on the surface of the table at the front of the room, accidentally sending a couple pens rolling to the floor. He glanced at them dolefully but made no attempt to grab them. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Hank von Leigh.” He scratched his head a little bit. The projector was slowly booting up behind him, and he kept glancing back at it to see if his lecture slides had appeared on the screen yet.

Kircheis scribbled on his notebook, “Are you going to go talk to him?”

“I don’t want to interrupt his lecture,” Mariendorf wrote back. She grinned at him a little.

At this point, Leigh was going over the syllabus. “I know that most of you do not have a strong interest in history, but I hope this class can impress upon you at least a few lessons that can be carried over to what you do in the SW practicum. If any of you have Captain Staden, you can feel free to ask him how I used my knowledge of history to give him a headache.” Leigh smiled a little, as though he was laughing at his own funny joke. “But even more than that, a focus in this course is on learning to think critically about situations that you find yourself in. There’s no amount of memorization of tactics that can prepare you to understand the real, human cost of fighting a war. Some of you will be asked to make hard decisions, and I hope that I can give you a framework to use to make the best decision you can under bad circumstances.”

He switched the lecture slide. “I suppose I should tell you a little about myself so that you know you can trust me.” He laughed again. On the screen were a couple photographs of himself-- one in a cadet uniform with several other young men, one with him standing next to someone in a Rear Admiral’s uniform on the bridge of a ship, and one in a group photograph of other officers. “Er, so, I’m from Phezzan, if you couldn’t tell. I studied here at the IOA and graduated in 479 as second in my class. I was Vice Admiral Merkatz’s adjutant for a little while, primarily patrolling the Iserlohn Corridor, and I was involved in these skirmishes and battles.” He flashed a list on the screen, but then moved past it before Kircheis could read the details. “And then I spent some time working in the Personnel Intelligence unit in the Ministry of War under Commodore Bronner. And now this is my second year teaching here.”

Kircheis had several thoughts about this quick rundown of Leigh’s. He had clearly moved around quite a lot, but had also been promoted relatively quickly, both of which seemed very strange. He might have been lying about being from Phezzan. He had a bit of an accent that didn’t strike Kircheis as particularly Phezzani, but, then again, Kircheis didn’t know any people from Phezzan.

“Any questions on that?” Before actually giving people a chance to answer, he said, “No? Great. So let’s get started with real history rather than personal history. I didn’t choose it, but the material I’m supposed to cover here starts at the Thirteen Day War…”

The lecture proceeded normally, except for the fact that Leigh spent the whole time sitting on the table, switching between several increasingly weird postures. He didn’t seem to have any lecture notes that he was reading off of, aside from the general slides behind him which he barely glanced at. He was a good lecturer, though, and Kircheis took notes as well as he could, though he was tempted to just put down his pen and listen. Next to him, Mariendorf was also taking notes, though hers were a lot more comprehensive than Kircheis’s were. When she saw him looking, she smiled a little.

As class came close to ending, Mariendorf shoved all her belongings into her backpack, then looked around as though considering what the fastest exit from the room was. Kircheis watched her, rather confused. 

“And that’s all I have for you today. Er, make sure you do the reading; it’s in the syllabus. And start thinking of topics for your first essay. See you on Friday,” Leigh said. He sat on his desk for a moment longer.

In the general rustling chaos of all the students gathering their things to leave, Mariendorf dodged out of the classroom. Kircheis followed her, feeling somehow responsible for this thirteen year old. “I thought you wanted to talk to Lieutenant Commander Leigh,” Kircheis said, running up to her, pushing past several of his classmates outside the door to do so. Mariendorf continued to try to slip away, but Kircheis didn’t let her.

“I just wanted to see the class,” she said, turning to face him. “You should let me go before--”

“Fraulein Mariendorf,” Leigh said, coming up behind Kircheis and putting his hand on his shoulder. “I was under the impression that you had your own school to attend.”

Kircheis turned, half attempting to leave the conversation, but Leigh gave him a smile that indicated that he was welcome to remain. 

Mariendorf crossed her arms. “Tuesday and Friday after lunch is ladies’ preparatory work,” she said. “I would rather skip it.”

Leigh looked as though he was trying to stifle a laugh. “I see. Does your father know that you’re not in school?”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?”

“Please, don’t,” she said.

“He might like to hear it better from me than hearing it from your school, which he pays good money for you to attend, you know.” 

“Oh.”

“Perhaps we should have this conversation in my office, rather than in the hallway, right?”

Mariendorf nodded. Leigh started walking down the hallway. When Kircheis didn’t follow, Leigh turned around and said, “Freshman number one, I’d love to hear how you came to be acquainted with Fraulein Mariendorf, if you have time.”

Kircheis didn’t have class after this, so he followed Leigh and Mariendorf down the hall and up a narrow set of stairs. Leigh unlocked an unassuming door and let them both into a chaotically messy office. He immediately sat on top of his desk, leaning his elbows on his knees, and looked at Kircheis and Mariendorf standing in front of him. “Well?” he asked.

“How did you know I’m the freshman number one?” Kircheis asked.

“You were in the number one spot at the convocation dinner,” Leigh replied. “I didn’t look up your name, though.”

“Kircheis. Siegfried Kircheis.”

Leigh stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Cadet Kircheis.” They shook. “And how do you know Fraulein Mariendorf?”

“I don’t,” Kircheis said. “She just said she was looking for you, so I offered to bring her.”

“He rescued me from an argument with the gate guard.”

“That was very kind of you.” He studied Kircheis intently. “The number one student, if you keep that spot… Well.” He trailed off a little.

“Sir?” Kircheis asked.

Leigh smiled. “I was just thinking of some friends of mine.” He pointed to a photograph on the wall behind Kircheis, who turned to look at it. A tall, dark haired man and a shorter blond man with a wide smile stared out from the frame, leaning slightly towards each other as they sat across from each other at a table outdoors. Both were wearing cadet uniforms. “Reuenthal and Mittermeyer. They were the number ones in my class and the year below. I suppose I just like to know who’s taking their place.”

Kircheis nodded a little bit.

“When is Oskar coming back to Odin?” Mariendorf asked.

“Hm? Oh, I don’t know,” Leigh said. “I can ask what his leave schedule is.” He stared nostalgically into space for a moment more, then shook himself a little. “You’ve gotten me off topic,” he said. “Hilde. You can’t just skip school. How did you even get here?”

“I took the train.”

Leigh rubbed the back of his neck. “And why did you come here?”

“I wanted to see you teach.” She pulled her notebook out of her backpack. “I took notes.” She showed it to him. Kircheis watched as Leigh tried and failed to stifle the look of happiness and pride on his face. 

“And were you planing to do this again?”

Hilde shoved her notebook back into her backpack then stood resolute. “Maybe.”

“Do you have a way to get back home?”

“The train.”

“I should call your father to have someone come pick you up.”

“He’s at Neue Sanssouci right now,” Hilde said confidently.

“Then I’ll call the house.”

“I can get home just fine.”

Kircheis felt awkward trapped in this argument. Leigh was taking out his phone, but then he seemed startled by the time. “I have to teach my elective in two minutes,” he said. “Hilde, I’m going to call your father about this  _ tonight _ .”

“Please don’t make me go to ladies’ prep. I hate it.”

“I’ll see what I can do for you.” Leigh stumbled off the table. He looked up at Kircheis (he was a good few inches shorter than he was). “I hate to trouble you, Cadet Kircheis, but would you be so kind as to make sure that Fraulein Mariendorf makes it out safely?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Great. Er, I really have to go.” He pushed the two out of his office, then locked the door behind him and practically ran off down the hallway. Kircheis watched him go, feeling slightly flummoxed. 

“You don’t need to escort me,” Hilde said as she began walking. “I know the way out now.”

“But Lieutenant Commander--”

“You don’t have to do what Hank tells you. He wouldn’t actually mind.”

“I’d feel better if I walked you,” Kircheis said. “It is against the rules for you to be here, I think.”

Hilde wrinkled her nose, but didn’t protest any more as Kircheis walked next to her. He led her out a back entrance to campus, so that they avoided the guard at the main gate (who was mainly symbolic anyway), and then kept walking with her long past the bounds of campus, heading towards the train station. Hilde actually knew the way better than he did, so he was just following her at that point. 

She bought herself a train ticket and sat down at one of the waiting benches. Kircheis was about to buy a ticket for himself, but she stopped him, saying, “Seriously, Siegfried, you do not need to follow me all the way home.”

He assented at that one, but sat on the bench to wait with her until the train arrived. She fished around in her backpack, found a plastic lunch container, opened it, and offered him some cookies. Kirchies took them gratefully. “Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” Hilde said with a happy smile.

“How do you know Lieutenant Commander von Leigh?” Kircheis asked, after eating one of the cookies and wishing he had something to drink with it.

“He’s been my friend forever,” Hilde said casually. “He used to stay with my family over the summers, while he went to school. My mother knew his friend Oskar’s mother. That’s how we know each other.”

“Oh, that makes sense. And you like him enough that you want to come see him teach?”

She turned to look at him, very steadily. “Hank is the greatest person in the world. You should listen to him, too.”

“What makes you say that?”

She tilted her head and looked at him, as if trying to figure out something about him. “What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” she asked. It was a strange question, one that Kircheis found he couldn’t answer, not directly, not to this child.

“I don’t know,” he said.

She was quiet for a second, still looking at him. Kircheis didn’t flinch under her gaze, but he didn’t really understand it either. “Hank knows what the bravest thing he’s done is. And he would do it again, if he had to. That’s all.”

It was at this point that the train began to pull in to the station, and Hilde gathered up all her belongings and stood. “Am I to believe that I’ll see you again on Friday?” Kircheis asked.

“I hope so,” Hilde said. She stuck out her hand to shake as soon as she had her backpack on her back. “It was nice to meet you, Siegfried.”

“Nice to meet you as well, Fraulein Mariendorf.” The train hissed to a stop and Hilde got on, waving one last time at Kircheis, who remained on the platform until the train departed.

* * *

_ October 482 IC, Odin _

It became Kircheis’s tradition to meet Hilde at the main gate and walk her in to visit Leigh. The guards on duty didn’t really care, or were mostly amused by Hilde’s self assuredness (unexpected from such a young lady) and soothed by Kircheis’s calmness about the situation. Pretending like it was normal somehow allowed it to be so. He wasn’t sure how she had secured permission to skip her regular school, but she showed up without fail after lunch every Tuesday and Friday. Kircheis was rather charmed by her, and she always brought some sort of snack to share with him at the end of class, so he suspected that she liked him, as well. 

One of those days, a rainy Friday, while they were walking underneath her umbrella (held up by Kircheis) to the train station, Hilde said, “You should come to my house some time and meet my father.”

Kircheis almost stopped walking. “I don’t think--”

“Why not?” Hilde asked. “You’re my friend. I’m sure he’d like to meet you.”

“I don’t think that would be appropriate,” Kircheis said.

Hilde squinted at him, and a fresh gust of wind blew some of the rain into her face. “I think it would be fine.”

“I’ll think about it,” Kircheis said. Hilde sighed but left it at that.

He didn’t interact much with Leigh, outside of going to his class. Leigh seemed to like him, and gave him an A on his first paper, with a scribbled comment that he could be more committed to his analysis, but aside from that and smiling at him on his way in to class, Leigh didn’t stop Kircheis to have a conversation. For his own part, Kircheis had no idea what to think about the mysterious man. Staden, who taught his strategic warfare practicum, had, in fact, made a face when someone brought up Leigh in his presence.

“Here’s the thing about Lieutenant Commander von Leigh,” Staden said to the class. “People fall into three categories with him-- those who like him for no apparent reason, those who hate him, and those of us who are grudgingly forced to admit that the man has talent.” Kircheis saw that a good number of his classmates were nodding along when Staden mentioned hating von Leigh. It left a bad taste in Kircheis’s mouth. “Love him or hate him, though, you’ll learn a lot from him if you pay attention. And that’s what you’re here to do, not gossip about your other teachers.” And then Staden moved on with the lesson.

Kircheis never tried to bring up the odd reason why Hilde thought that Leigh was the greatest person. He didn’t really understand what she meant by it, and he suspected he wouldn’t get a straight answer if he did ask. But it sat in the back of his mind, regardless. He wondered exactly what Leigh had done. He was somewhat tempted to ask Staden, since the two seemed to be friends, maybe go visit his office hours, but decided that it was better not to pry. Kircheis already had enough unwanted attention on himself.

He held on to his number one spot without much difficulty. He gave his full effort to everything, of course, but he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t beaten. Every time he left one of the SW classes, even though he won his matches, he could always see immediately ten different ways he could have been crushed, if his opponent was quicker on the uptake, or more vigorous, or paying better attention. Kircheis wrote all of these things down in his post mortems, and Staden once left a comment on his paper that read, “You give me a headache with this. Your opponent doesn’t have the ability to retrospectively see five moves ahead like you are now. In the moment, you make good choices, so don’t overthink yourself into paralysis.”

Kircheis had no idea how to interpret  _ that _ either.

He was friendly to and generally well liked by his classmates, but he wouldn’t say that he had any friends. At least his pleasant and helpful attitude prevented resentment from forming that he was first. On weekends that he wasn’t busy, Martin would take the long train ride in to see him, which was enough to keep him mostly happy. He did admit that he enjoyed school work at the IOA more than he had enjoyed high school, even if he did miss his literature classes. He even made time to keep up his fencing and other activities, signing up for a night class almost every night of the week. He kept himself busy enough that he didn’t have to think.

It was in October, when he felt like he had really settled in to his schedule and way of life at the IOA, that he received notice of a slight upcoming disruption. He lay on his bed and texted Martin about it, holding his phone above his head.

> don’t bother coming to see me this weekend

< why?

> I have to go on a school trip

< to where

> neue sanssouci

> for a deer hunt

< …

< who will be there?

> top students from each class

> and i assume whatever staff are shepherding us

> i don’t know if we’ll see anyone at neue sanssouci

< stay safe

> i’m sorry that we won’t be able to meet this weekend

< it’s fine, i’m sure i can find some homework to work on

> school still fine?

< worse without you

> i’m sorry :(

< it’s ok :) when I go to ONU we’ll be much closer

> seems like a long time away

< not that long. year and a half

< you’re more patient than i am so you should survive

> maybe so

Kircheis smiled at his phone, then put it away to sleep. 

That Saturday, Kircheis lined up with all the other top students on the edge of campus, waiting for the bus that would take them up to Neue Sanssouci. Surprisingly, as they were getting on, someone ran up to the bus at a jog, and it turned out to be Leigh. One of the other staff members that Kircheis was unfamiliar with, at the front of the bus gave Leigh an annoyed look.

“On time as always, Leigh.”

“Can you blame me for not wanting to come?” Leigh asked.

“The kaiser likes you,” the other man, a captain, said. “You could hardly not be assigned escort duty.”

Leigh balanced his hands in the air, as though he were a set of scales. “The kaiser likes me, I almost got shot to death on this field trip… There are many different things to consider.” But his voice was humorous, and the other man laughed.

“I remember that.”

“It wasn’t that long ago.”

Everything about this conversation only added fuel to the fire of Kircheis’s imagination. The  _ kaiser  _ liked  _ Leigh _ ? The obvious foreigner? And Leigh had almost been shot to death? Here? Kircheis looked over at him, and Leigh caught the look, an amused expression on his own face. 

Kircheis shook his head and looked away, out the windows of the bus for the remainder of the ride.

After they arrived at Neue Sanssouci and were shuffled through the many labyrinthine hallways, Kircheis was surprised to learn that they would be having a kind of customary direct audience with the kaiser. That was the last thing he wanted, considering that he was technically a criminal who had been about one unpaid bribe away from getting executed for treason. As the kaiser walked into the room, everyone stiffened, but Kircheis stiffened even more than usual. The only person in the whole area who seemed (somewhat) nonchalant was Leigh, who gave the students an almost sympathetic look from where he lingered against the wall, saluting the kaiser. Maybe there was some truth to the idea that the kaiser liked him.

The kaiser went down the lines of students, saying a few words to the first in the class of the seniors, juniors, and sophomores, before he came to the freshmen. Kircheis could feel everyone’s eyes on him.

“So, you’re the latest IOA crop,” the kaiser said.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Kircheis said, echoing what the other students had said.

“What’s your name?”

“Kircheis, sir. Siegfried Kircheis.”

“I hope to see you back again next year, Siegfried Kircheis,” the kaiser said. 

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Kircheis said. And that was the end of it. The kaiser walked past him.

“Von Leigh, would you care to join Susanna and I for breakfast?”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Leigh said. Several of the students couldn’t stop themselves from exchanging somewhat wide eyed glances at this. Leigh followed the kaiser out of the room, and the whole scene descended into mutterings between the students. All of the freshmen and sophomores in the group had had Leigh as a teacher, since he taught a mandatory class, but Kircheis wasn’t sure if that made the mutterings more or less hostile towards him. The gossip quickly turned to other matters, though, as the students were led off to their own lavish breakfast, and then out to the hunt.

Kircheis was happy to be in the crisp October air. It was a beautiful day, with a cloudless sky and fresh breeze. The only problem was the temperature, but as soon as Kircheis was saddled up on his horse, his uniform and the movement kept him warm enough.

He was a good rider, and a good shot with the bow, having briefly done both horseback riding and archery as activities in high school before settling on fencing as his main competitive sport. Still, the muscle memory came back to him easily, and he took a few practice shots with the bow, driving some arrows deep into trees. He didn’t actually want to hunt a deer, so he separated himself from his classmates and simply wandered around the forest for a while. 

When he was deep into the forest, he spotted a deer, its antlers bobbing up and down as it drank from a tiny stream. Kircheis watched it, holding his breath.

Reinhard would have shot it without hesitation, he thought. Kircheis could shoot it, if he wanted to. He certainly had the skill. His hand tightened around the bow in his hand, but he made no move to notch an arrow.

“I’m keeping my promise, Reinhard,” he said aloud, which startled the deer. “Are you keeping yours?” The deer looked up at him, then darted away, vanishing into the undergrowth.

Kircheis shivered a little bit, feeling like the forest had suddenly grown colder without the spectral memory of Reinhard next to him. He turned his horse and headed back out of the woods.

He found a few of his classmates milling around on the lawns of Neue Sanssouci, apparently bored of hunting. Kircheis stabled his horse, patting her on the nose in thanks, then returned the rest of the equipment. When he walked out of the stable area, he was surprised to find Leigh laying in the grass, apparently asleep, or at least with a book draped completely over his face to block out the sun.

“Aren’t you cold there, sir?” Kircheis asked, thinking that this might be a good opportunity to ask Leigh what to do about Hilde’s open invitation.

Leigh lazily reached up and pulled the book off his face. “Done hunting already, Kircheis?” He got himself into a sitting position.

“I don’t think it really suits me,” Kircheis said.

“You looked like you were a good rider.”

Kircheis shrugged. “Mind if I sit?”

“Of course not.” So Kircheis sat on the ground next to Leigh.

He looked off into the woods, watching some of his classmates ride in and out of the trees, some of them chasing each other around. “I never really liked the idea of killing without a reason,” he said. “That’s all.”

Leigh smiled. “I understand.”

“You don’t like hunting either?”

“I’m a terrible horseback rider, a terrible archer, and I don’t prefer it as a sport,” Leigh said.

“You said on the bus that you almost got shot here?”

“No, I said that I almost got shot to death,” Leigh said. “Subtle but key difference. I did get shot.”

“I’m sorry.”

He smiled a little. “It’s fine. It’s mostly funny, at this point. My friend Baroness Westpfale makes me tell the embarrassing story at parties.” He rubbed his thigh a little. “Had an arrow go all the way through me, right there.”

“I’m glad you didn’t die, sir,” Kircheis said.

Leigh laughed. “You’d have an easier history class if I had died and therefore wasn’t your teacher.”

“I like your class.”

“You’re one of the few, I think.”

“Do you like teaching?”

“Oh, yes. I do. It’s nice to feel like I’m doing some good.” He smiled a little. “Thank you for taking care of Hilde, by the way.”

“Er, you’re welcome. I don’t really do anything, though.”

“I would be worried about her wandering around campus by herself.”

“She thinks she would be fine.”

“She appreciates your company, even if she does think that she’s a match for the average IOA student.”

“Is she?”

“Is she what?”

“A match for the average IOA student?”

Leigh laughed, a rather charming sound. “I’ve never seen her get into a fight, but I think she’s quick and scrappy. She’s certainly the intellectual equal of most of your classmates.”

“How did she convince people to let her attend your class?”

“Her father, and I think this is to his credit, indulges her more than any other father has ever indulged their daughter. He’s lucky that Hilde’s indulgences run towards dressing like a boy and skipping dance class to come learn military history.”

“I see.”

“I told her that I would deliver her a private lecture if she wanted, but she wouldn’t accept that as an answer. I think it’s sweet that she comes to see me, anyway.” He smiled a little. “Why do you ask?”

“She told me that I should visit her house some time.”

“You should,” Leigh said. “Her father is a generous man, and he likes anyone that Hilde likes.”

“I would not want him to think that I’m taking advantage of his daughter.”

“Are you?”

“No, sir,” Kircheis said as emphatically as possible. “For one thing, she’s a child.”

“She’s only three years younger than yourself. But I see what you mean.” Leigh rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m of the odd opinion that it’s good for students here to have friends outside the school. I’m also of the opinion that Hilde is a good judge of character, and she likes you. It seems natural to me that you could be friends.”

“We really don’t know anything about each other.”

“You don’t?” Leigh tilted his head to look at him. “There’s a lot that can be learned just from being in someone’s presence.”

“Is there, sir?”

“Don’t you feel, when you look at me, you already know everything there is to know?” Leigh had a weird expression on his face, like he was making a joke that Kircheis had no hope of understanding.

“Every new thing I see about you makes me more confused,” Kircheis said.

Leigh laughed. “I’m given to understand that I have that effect on certain people. But truthfully, I’m not a complicated man.”

“Tell me of a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost, when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy…” Kircheis said without really thinking.

“Are you accusing me of something?” Leigh asked, smiling and tilting his head.

“What?”

“Odysseus, lord of lies,” Leigh replied. “Or perhaps just a man far from home.”

Kircheis shook his head and backed off a little. “No, I didn’t mean anything by it. I just-- a friend of mine likes to quote the classics. I can’t help but think about what he would say if he heard you say that.”

“A friend at the IOA?”

“No, from home,” Kircheis said.

“He must be a good friend, since you say you’ve picked up his mannerisms.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I sometimes worry that my bad habits rub off on my friend Reuenthal,” Leigh said. “But perhaps his good ones are just as likely to rub off on me.” Again, that weird smile on Leigh’s face.

Kircheis didn’t know how to respond to that, so he stayed silent for a second and looked at the book that Leigh had either been reading or using as a face mask, or both. Surprisingly, the title was not printed in the imperial language. Leigh noticed the inquisitive look and passed the book to Kircheis. Although he had been taking the mandatory class on the language used on the other side of the galaxy, he was only a semester into it, so when he flipped to the first page, most of it was meaningless to him. Leigh watched him examine it. 

“A gift from the kaiser,” Leigh said, by way of explanation, which served to mystify things rather than clear them up.

“You are friends with the kaiser, sir?”

“I would not presume to put it in those terms. But I think that the kaiser gets some amusement out of speaking to me,” he said. The tone in his voice was absolutely inscrutable. “This was seized from a rebel ship when it was captured. Since the kaiser knows I have an interest in history, he put out a standing order for all newly seized history texts to be collected and offered to me. Very generous of him.”

“You speak the rebel language enough to read it easily?”

“Fluently,” Leigh said, with no further explanation.

“Could you just get books like this through Phezzan?”

“Imagine the hassle that that would entail,” he said. “Not to mention the associated cost and suspicion. If the kaiser wishes to bestow his gifts and favor upon me, who am I to not accept them?”

“May I ask how he came to know you?”

“It’s a long and silly story,” he said, but talked about the accident his freshman year, and then a long string of incidents that seemed to revolve around Baroness Westpfale. They weren’t described in any detail, so it was more like a list of times that he had encountered the kaiser rather than reasons he had given for the kaiser to want him around. “Anyway,” he said, “I have the kaiser’s favor to thank for many things, including my position at the IOA. I’m not sure if it’s making my life easier or harder.”

“Do you like the kaiser?”

“Kircheis, let’s be more circumspect in our questioning, shall we?”

“Yes, sir,” Kircheis said. “Sorry, sir.”

“No need to apologize.” He took the book back from Kircheis. “It’s just sometimes better not to ask questions to which there can only be a true answer or a lie. It will prevent resentment on both the part of the asker and the answerer.”

Kircheis nodded. “I understand.”

Leigh smiled. “Good lad.”

The faint praise made Kircheis feel slightly flustered, and he looked away from Leigh, heat rising in his face. Leigh seemed ignorant of this, or at least willing to ignore it, because he said, “I can solve your Hilde problem for you, by the way, if you like.”

“Oh, er, thank you, sir.”

“I shall invite you to the Mariendorf house myself, and then there will be no thoughts of impropriety from the count.”

“That seems--”

“The count is very used to his guests inviting their own guests to his house,” Leigh said. “He will be pleased to meet you, I’m sure. You’re a good student.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Leigh stood, shaking out his legs and wiping the grass from his pants before offering Kircheis a hand up. Kircheis took it and Leigh pulled him to his feet, ending up with Leigh looking upwards slightly to meet his eyes. “I’ll let you know the time-- it might not be for a while. But don’t think I won’t make you work for this favor-- make sure you do the class reading beforehand.”

“Are you going to have me help Fraulein Mariendorf with her studying?”

Leigh laughed again. “No. She does very well in my class, considering that she is not a student. I think this is a way to kill two birds with one stone. Hilde wants to take the SW practicum, but has thus far had no one to play against. I can force you to play, though.”

“Sir, I’m sure that Fraulein Mariendorf is very talented--”

“Kircheis, I do not think that you need to concern yourself with hurting her feelings.”

“I didn’t mean to imply anything other than I have practice and she does not.”

“And that you’re the top ranked student, who Staden says is undefeated, and you’re years older than her, and she’s a girl besides.”

A flicker of anger rose up in his chest, but then he looked at Leigh’s face and saw that Leigh was having a joke at Kircheis’s expense. “No, sir,” he said.

“I think that there is a chance that you will be the one to end up with hurt feelings,” Leigh said.

“I know how to lose gracefully, sir.”

“Do you?” He smiled. “It’s hard to know that when you have yet to actually lose.”

“The SW practicum is not the only opportunity a person has to suffer defeat.”

Leigh looked at him more seriously, then. “You’re right about that.”

“Do you really believe that Fraulein Mariendorf is that skilled?”

“I haven’t actually had a chance to see either you or her play, of course,” Leigh said. “But while you have the benefit of practice, Hilde has the benefit of my private tutoring since she was about seven years old.”

Kircheis was silent.

“Do you not think that I would be as competent of a teacher at SW as I am at history? Or were you lying when you complimented my teaching earlier.” Again, Leigh seemed to be having a laugh at his expense.

“No, sir,” Kircheis said. “My hesitation is only that I haven’t seen your performance, just like you haven’t seen mine or Fraulein Mariendorf’s.”

“An understandable hesitation,” Leigh said. “I’ll send you something so that you can see my bona fides.”

“You don’t need to do that, sir.”

“You can think of it as a test for yourself, as well,” Leigh said. “If that makes you feel any better.”

“I don’t want any special attention,” Kircheis said.

“Oh, well, I think that my special attention is worth very little.” Leigh ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe even worse than useless.” He looked at Kircheis. “Actually, you’re right that maybe I shouldn’t bother you. I’m the kind of person who drags others down to my level.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you, sir, and I apologize if I did.”

Leigh smiled at him. “If there’s any insult here, it’s been my fault. Well, think about it, anyway, and either let me know what you want, or don’t.” He clapped a hand on Kircheis’s shoulder for a second. “I’m glad we could talk, Kircheis.”

Before Kircheis could say anything in reply, Leigh was already walking away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Black lives matter protests continue. If you haven't yet, I urge you to find a bail fund or community organization to donate to. Please stay safe if you are attending any demonstrations in your area.
> 
> Kircheis's mom making the (correct) assumption that he and Martin are gay is like a constant struggle in her head between YouHateToSeeIt.jpeg and IPretendIDoNotSeeIt.jpeg
> 
> Martin has a bit of survivor's guilt going on. Most of his anger is misdirected flailing.
> 
> I love Hilde and that's really all there is to say about THAT.
> 
> Kircheis has like, extremely weird and conflicted feelings about Yang. On one hand, there's the sort of immediate 'kindred spirit' attraction that Yang tends to inspire in people, but otoh, Kircheis is like "what possible political opinions could someone who has maybe defected from the FPA have???" and every new thing he learns about Yang makes him more confused. I think it's really funny to finally get an outside perspective on Yang's whole... thing.
> 
> For some reason all my usual thoughts about chapters have blanked out of my mind lmao.
> 
> [Oh, I drew this picture, though ymmv on its goodness](https://66.media.tumblr.com/282bd1c9d3522abb84dcab8a7d70f9d7/bf71c56c53f3222e-6b/s2048x3072/834e46054e07a75450630609b85e4b85897ade0a.jpg)
> 
> Thank you to Lydia for catching all the places where I abandon a sentence halfway through. I'm javert on tumblr and natsinator on twitter, and my original science fiction can be found @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven , as well as a mystery @ bit.ly/arcadispark


	12. Well-Meaning Teachers

_ November 482 IC, Odin _

Yang kept seeing Kircheis in class, and the two were cordial to each other, but for some time he didn’t get a direct answer about if Kircheis wanted to move more deeply into what Yang was beginning to understand as his sphere of influence. His answer came eventually from Hilde. Yang had come to her house on a beautiful but blisteringly cold Sunday afternoon, as was his custom, mostly just for the company. Yang was seated on the floor near the fireplace, grading papers. The omnipresent temptation was to chuck them into the fire. Hilde was sprawled across the couch, painstakingly picking her way through one of Yang’s history books that he had gotten from the kaiser, this one being all about Ale Heinessen. Hilde did not speak the Alliance language, but she was determined to learn how to read it. She asked Yang for a translation of every third word, which could have been annoying, but Yang was endlessly patient with her.

She had been silent for a few minutes now, though, which Yang didn’t notice, so intent was he on scowling at his students’ exam essays. Hilde was watching him. “Hank,” she said.

“Mmm?”

“Siegfried was asking me about you.”

“Oh? What did he say?” Yang turned to face her, grateful for any excuse to abandon his grading.

“He asked where you came from, and I said Phezzan, and he asked if that was really true.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I didn’t know any different.”

Yang smiled. “Good answer. What else did he ask?”

“Just what you believe in.”

“And what did you tell him was the answer to that?”

“That you’re a good person who believes in helping people.”

“You’re too generous to me, Fraulein Hilde.”

“He says he can’t figure you out.”

“I told him already that there’s nothing to figure out.” Yang smiled a little. “You can tell him, and it’s fine if he knows that I said this, that anything that he needs to know about me is a matter of public record.”

Hilde sat up straight. “You think he can figure out--”

Yang raised a finger to silence her, and pointed at the open door to the parlor that they were sitting in. Hilde’s father was not around, but the servants were. Hilde nodded and stayed silent.

“The way that one interprets the public record says as much about the interpreter as it does about the event. You know this.” He nodded at the book in Hilde’s hands, which she closed.

“Then why did you tell me to keep quiet?”

“Because there’s a big difference between things that anybody can see if they look closely enough, and things that are discussed for all to hear. Your father, for example, has not looked closely, and I don’t particularly want him to.”

Hilde nodded slowly. “Do you want him to figure it out?”

Yang looked into the fire for a second, thinking of Kircheis’s shockingly red hair. “Do you want him to figure it out?”

“Yes, of course,” Hilde said immediately, then corrected herself. “I think so, anyway.”

“Do you think he will?”

Hilde considered this. “Maybe. I don’t know what he thinks about, though. He’s quiet.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Yang said with a smile. “He’s a good student. I feel like he’s holding himself back.”

“Why do you say that?”

Yang just smiled and reached over to tousle Hilde’s hair. “I’m very aware of what that looks like in a person.”

* * *

The next Tuesday night, Hilde sent Yang a text message.

< Siegfried says he wants to play against me now

< and my dad says that you and he are BOTH welcome for lunch on saturday

So, on Wednesday, Yang stopped by the one place he knew he would find Kircheis, the freshman SW practicum. He confidently wandered into the classroom and sidled up to Staden at the front. “How are all my freshmen doing?” he asked. They spoke in quiet voices, so that they wouldn’t disrupt the students playing the simulation game.

“I think most people would describe them as more mine than yours, but if you want to claim them as your problem, feel free,” Staden said. “They could be doing worse, I suppose.”

Yang smiled. “Any giving you any trouble?”

“Trouble? No. Headaches? Some. Did you need something, Leigh, or did you just come to increase my headache?”

“Are you breaking for lunch soon? I wanted to steal Cadet Kircheis.”

“Oh?”

“You say that like you’re surprised.”

“I’m not sure what you could want him for.”

“He asked me for some extra reading material.”

“Did he now?”

“Is there a reason he shouldn’t?”

“His post mortems are the most overworked things I’ve seen in years. He doesn’t need to drive himself crazy with more thinking.”

Yang laughed. “Do you want me to try to cure him of it?”

“Some bad habits that cadets come in with are incurable, I’m afraid.” Staden glanced at his watch. “We’re breaking for lunch in fifteen. Do you want to see the gamestate?”

“Sure.” 

Staden led Yang over to the master computer, from which he could see all the logs of all of the games. Each game and participant was identified by a unique number, so Yang couldn’t immediately see which one was Kircheis. He glanced over the scenario enough to get a sense of what he was looking at, and then began paging through the game logs, examining each one to see if he could figure out which one belonged to Kircheis. He suspected Staden, as usual, was testing him. 

The scenario was somewhat involved, and was a space battle, both of which were odd for the freshman class, since Staden liked to start off with simpler ground exercises. In this particular game, one team was attempting to hold a planet, while the other team was attempting to break through to rescue the planet under siege. Both sides had numerous ways to lose. If the rescuing team did not arrive quickly enough, the planet would suffer. If the planet was hurt, that would be a loss for the rescuers as well. The team holding the planet would lose if they didn’t manage to maintain order on the planet, or if they were defeated by the rescuers. It was a delicate balance that they all had to strike. The GMs were responsible for simulating the unruly populace. 

“This is more realistic than you usually make it,” Yang said.

“I’ve been trying to incorporate some realism recently, though it tends to break some of their brains,” Staden said. 

Most of the games had gone directly in to the meat of the battle, since most students understood the ‘point’ of SW class to be practicing battle tactics. There was one game, however, that appeared extremely strange. The defending force had split apart into a large group and a small group, with the large group leaving the planet to hide near the system’s star. The small group had then gone out to skirmish with the incoming ships, and feigned retreating towards the planet. It reminded Yang very much of the first battle he had led, the one where Merkatz, still a commodore then, had allowed him to take command of the battle group while on patrol.

“Kircheis is defending here, correct?” Yang asked.

“How did you know?”

“He’s taken inspiration from a public record that I directed him to,” Yang said. “Playing a little dangerously, though.”

“He’s undefeated so far,” Staden said. “I have no doubt that he’ll remain that way this time.” Yang nodded. He could see that Kircheis was making subtle improvements to the strategy that the Alliance forces had applied that time against him. For one thing, he had made sure that the small group he sent out to skirmish was not just a sacrificial lamb but bait, drawing the enemy in closer-- he was careful not to lose too many ships. And he also kept his main force far closer, and he was beginning to bring them in now, as soon as it was clear that the attacking force had committed to moving closer to the planet. It was a good strategy, and he could see why Kircheis had chosen it.

“I’m sure in his postmortem he’ll spend three pages describing different tactics with which someone could have beaten him,” Staden said, watching the display as the GMs moved the ships. 

“It’s good to be aware of the flaws in a strategy,” Yang said quietly. “Stops you from getting overconfident.”

“Perspective is one thing, feeling like you’re against an omniscient enemy is another. It’s not overconfidence that’s the problem, but underconfidence.”

“Does he lack confidence, though?”

“He hedges his bets in his writing.”

“Not here, though. Not where it counts,” Yang said, feeling compelled to defend Kircheis. “He made a plan, and he’s following through on it. That requires confidence.”

“I hope that you’re right.”

Yang smiled. “I don’t know how I’m more optimistic about your students than you are.”

“It’s because teaching here and thinking about how, if I don’t impress the correct thoughts into their heads, they’re all going to go off and get themselves and thousands of other people killed has given me an ulcer the size of my stomach,” Staden said. “Speaking of. It’s time to break for lunch.” He hit the command on the master computer that would freeze everyone’s games.

“Thanks for letting me see the game. It was enlightening,” Yang said.

“I’m sure,” Staden said. “Go catch your cadet.” Then Staden was forced to walk away to yell at two cadets who had decided to talk about the ongoing game in front of him.

Yang went out into the hallway and waited for Kircheis to emerge from one of the other rooms. He didn’t see Yang, and he walked by himself, stretching his arms out over his head, fingertips easily grabbing on to the upper door frame as he passed under it.

“Kircheis,” Yang said. The redhead jumped, startled, and stopped walking, looking around for the source of his name. Yang waved and smiled.

“Oh, Lieutenant Commander, I didn’t see you there.”

“Join me for lunch, Cadet?”

Kircheis looked around at his classmates streaming past then said, “If you like, sir.”

Yang glanced at the time. “If we’re fast, we can get Joseph’s.”

“I’m underage, sir.”

“They have excellent sandwiches there. Come on.” Yang led Kircheis out, and they braved the bitingly cold air and headed off campus to Joseph’s. The sky was thick and grey overhead, and a few flurries of snow were coming down, landing on their hair and melting immediately. 

“Any plans for winter break, Kircheis?” Yang asked as they walked.

“Not really, sir. Mostly just going to go home.” He looked into the distance a little wistfully. “It will be nice to have time to really see my friend again.”

“The one who quotes classics?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Martin Bufholtz. What about you, sir?” Yang noticed the slight rise of tension in Kircheis’s voice, so didn’t mind that he switched the topic.

“Oh, I think I’ll try to get some work done. Maybe finally finish the edits to my book.”

“That’s exciting.”

“There’s no need to lie to me,” Yang said. “I live a very boring lifestyle, and it gives me great joy.” They made it to Joseph’s and ducked inside the dark bar, each shaking off their hair and brushing off their shoulders to clear the little bits of snow. Yang gestured to his favorite booth and they both sat, with Yang immediately contorting himself to bring his legs up on the chair. Kircheis sat much more politely.

The waitress came around to take their order. “Your usual, Hank?” she said.

“Yes, thank you, Maria. And what do you want, Kircheis?”

“Er, turkey club, and a water, thanks.”

After the waitress left, Kircheis asked, “Was there something you wanted me for, sir?”

“I see you did some digging,” Yang said. “And you’re ready to match up against Hilde.”

“How did you know?”

“Well, for one thing, Staden showed me your game that’s in progress.”

Kircheis blushed, his cheeks and ears matching his hair. Yang smiled a little. “You saw that, sir?”

“So, I was right about where you got your inspiration from. It’s not a bad strategy.”

“We shouldn’t talk about it-- it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Oh, right.” Yang leaned back against the wall and looked at Kircheis steadily. “Was that the only battle you looked up?”

“No, sir,” he said. “I looked at all the ones that you listed, that first day of class.”

“Do you have any opinions on what you saw?”

Kircheis looked away. He opened his mouth once, then closed it again. “How could I not have opinions, sir?”

“You look as though you want to say something.”

“I’m not sure how you survived, sir.”

“I was young and inexperienced. Sometimes people who are young and inexperienced are allowed to make mistakes.” Yang smiled, though.

“I know what you mean.”

“Do you?” Yang asked. Kircheis immediately closed his mouth, as though he had said too much. This was extremely interesting to Yang, who leaned forward a little bit. “You’re even younger and more inexperienced than I was.”

Kircheis’s eyes were wide, as though he realized that he had made a mistake and revealed too much. About what, Yang didn’t know, but he was suddenly more interested in Kircheis than he had been even before. He had the fleeting thought that he could ask Bronner to investigate his student, but then he shook his head and squashed it. “Well, nevermind, if you don’t want to say.”

Kircheis nodded. At this point, the waitress brought over their food, and Yang let the topic drop for a moment. He wanted to know what Kircheis’s real thoughts were, but the wall in between them, the obligation of secrets, was too high. But at least he knew that there was a wall.

“You should come with me to Count Mariendorf’s house this weekend. I would like to see you play an SW game against Hilde.”

“If everyone is sure that the count won’t mind.”

“He’s a very nice man,” Yang said. “The kind of person to honestly and gently scold me for making a mistake like I did.” He hoped that Kircheis would understand what he meant-- that the count had no idea of Yang’s ulterior motives.

“I see, sir.”

“Now, Hilde, she scolded me for completely different reasons.”

“She doesn’t seem like she would be unhappy…” Kircheis said. He was phrasing it very delicately. “She spoke very highly of… the things you’ve accomplished.”

Yang smiled. “She was unhappy that I could have died. I had to explain to her plainly the reality of being a soldier. She is still very young.”

Kircheis nodded. “She doesn’t act her age.”

“She never has. I would worry that I was taking her childhood away from her, by practicing all my teaching on her, but she has always been happiest when she’s got her fingers on the pulse of the world.”

“She understands a lot, then?”

“Not everything,” Yang said. “Not yet.”

“Is there something more to understand?” Kircheis asked. 

Yang tilted his head. “There is a nearly infinite supply of things to understand about this world.”

“I suppose.”

Yang took a drink of his beer and studied Kircheis in silence. Kircheis didn’t flinch under his gaze, but was certainly aware of it, lifting his eyes to study Yang in return, though carefully avoiding eye contact. “Why do you have such an interest in me, sir?” Kircheis asked.

“I wasn’t aware that I was, more than usual,” Yang said. “It was you who spoke to me on the day of the hunt. Does it bother you?”

“No, sir,” Kircheis said.

“It’s funny,” Yang said. “I feel like I’ve been in your position, asking that same question, so many times in my life. Maybe that’s part of growing older. You become the interested rather than the interesting.”

“I don’t think you’re uninteresting, sir,” Kircheis said, but looked away.

“Kind of you to say that,” Yang said, keeping his voice intentionally dry. “Being interesting, though, can be a bit of a curse.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t aware that you were deaf, Kircheis.” 

“Sir?” Yang had been teasing him, but Kircheis seemed genuinely startled.

“Don’t pretend not to have heard the way your classmates talk about me.” 

“Oh. I’m sorry, about them, sir.”

“It’s hardly your fault.” Yang waved his hand. “That is one curse of being interesting, anyway.”

“I don’t think I share it,” Kircheis said. 

“Not that particular one,” Yang agreed. He changed the topic, just a little. “You’re holding yourself back, aren’t you?”

“No, sir.”

Yang picked up a french fry from his plate and gestured with it. “You are. You hedge your bets, Staden says. And you don’t speak up to lead the other students. That will cause you trouble when Staden puts you on teams.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I just see-- Well, what kind of ambitions do you have, Kircheis?” He felt rather like Reuenthal.

“None, sir.”

“No ambitions? You could at least say ‘to retire with a nice pension’ or ‘to remain top of the class.’ There isn’t a wrong answer.” He was amused, though Kircheis wouldn’t possibly be able to understand why.

Kircheis seemed very uncomfortable. “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Think about it,” Yang said. “It’s well and good to be first through talent alone, but if you don’t put that talent towards something intentionally, you’re liable to get lost.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I just mean that life will start pushing you in one direction or another, and you’ll never have a reason to choose one path…” He shrugged. “People will be able to take advantage of your talent if you don’t have your own motivations. Even if they’re simple ones, you should still have them.”

“Do you have ambitions, sir?”

“Of course I do.” When Kircheis didn’t say anything, as though he was waiting for Yang to continue, Yang said, “I want to do more good than harm. And after that, I want to live an easy and happy life. Drink hot tea and good beer.” He knocked his knuckle on the rim of his beer glass.

“I think we have something in common, then,” Kircheis said. 

Yang was frozen for a second, then grinned broadly. “I certainly hope so, Kircheis.” He raised his beer. “To leaving the universe a better place than we found it.”

Yang wasn’t sure he had seen Kircheis smile yet, but when he did, the expression was beatific. His eyes crinkled up so much that they practically closed. Kircheis raised his glass of water towards him. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

_ February 483 IC, Odin _

From that point, on, Kircheis was quite friendly towards Yang. They didn’t have much occasion to speak socially during the week-- for all that the age difference between them was relatively small, Yang was still Kircheis’s teacher, so he would have felt strange inviting him out drinking. But Kircheis came to Yang’s office hours fairly often, mostly just to talk. They also ended up meeting at the Mariendorf house several times, due to Hilde inviting them both at once.

After the third time this happened, Count Mariendorf pulled Yang aside. They stepped into the hallway, still able to see through the glass door into the parlor where Kircheis and Hilde were comparing notes on the battle that they had just simulated. Kircheis was smiling, but Hilde was leaning forward, very intensely scribbling something on a piece of paper. They could hear their muted tones, but couldn’t make out the exact words they were saying.

“Hilde likes that game you play with her, doesn’t she?” the count asked, speaking softly.

“She’s very good at it,” Yang said.

“It’s rare that I get to see her so engaged.” Franz was rather melancholy. “You can see the gears turning in her brain.”

“Kircheis is the number one student in the freshman class, and undefeated in school,” Yang said. “But I give it two or three more matches before she beats him.”

“Really?” Franz asked. “You’ve taught her well.”

“She’s not my student.”

Franz chuckled and put his hand on Yang’s shoulder. “No, she was your guinea pig for when you became a teacher. I think you have a natural way with it.”

“Only with certain types of students,” Yang said. “Others…” He shrugged helplessly.

“Everyone has their strengths.” He sighed a little. “I don’t know what to think about this being Hilde’s.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I am not sure that I should be glad or not that Hilde was not born a boy. She could go far if she was.”

“You think she can’t be successful as a woman?”

“Am I doing her a disservice?” Franz asked. “To let her pretend that she won’t become a woman eventually?”

“I don’t have any idea what you mean, sir.”

He gestured through the window at her. Hilde was typing something onto the computer, then dragging simulated ships forward and backward through space. Kircheis pointed at the screen and said something to her, which caused her to sit back on her haunches and frown, then type something else. “When I die, and she’s my heir, will she be able to dress like a boy forever? She skips her finishing classes, and I give her permission because I would be bored out of my mind by them too. She sneaks into the top military academy to attend lectures, because you and I help her along. But somebody is going to stop her, eventually. And when she’s a few years older and wants to attend a university… She won’t be allowed to go to the IOA, even though I think she secretly dreams of it.”

“I don’t think she’s as ignorant of that as you worry she is.” Yang rubbed the back of his head. “I never hear her talk about the future. Do you?”

“No.”

Yang nodded. “I would put money on that being because she doesn’t want to think about what you were just saying. She might not think it in those terms, but…” Yang shrugged.

“Is it wrong? For me to indulge her?”

“No, sir,” Yang said. “Why would it be wrong?”

“Because it will hurt all the more when it’s taken away.”

“Let her be happy,” Yang said. “She’ll figure out the best way to live for herself when she needs to.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“If there’s one thing I am sure of, it’s that Hilde is very capable. I don’t think you need to worry.”

“It’s my job as a father.” He rubbed his chin. “What would Amelie think of her? That’s another thing I have to wonder.”

“She would be very proud of her talented and open-hearted daughter,” Yang said firmly. “Everything else is secondary.”

“And I see that I’m leaning on you once again. I apologize.”

Yang shook his head. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

Franz was silent for half a second, then said, “That cadet. What are his intentions?”

“Intentions, sir?”

“With Hilde.”

“I think they’re just friends. He was concerned that you would think he was taking advantage.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Yang said. “I have no reason to believe Kircheis is anything but honest.” He paused for a second. “I’m glad that they’re friends. I don’t believe he has any at the IOA.”

“Really?”

Yang shrugged. “Perhaps the kind of friendship that I had while I was there is rarer than I thought.”

The count made a noncommittal noise. “He seems like a nice young man.”

Yang smiled. “He is.”

“Well, I hope he’s not getting his hopes up about anything.”

Yang looked at him. “Will you forbid him from seeing her?”

“Oh, no,” Franz said. “I just don’t think Hilde has any interest.”

“What makes you say that? They seem to be getting along.”

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Franz said, closing the topic, though he hadn’t even said anything. “She’s young, anyway.”

“That is very true. Who can say what the future will hold?”

* * *

_ May 483 IC, Odin _

The atmosphere around campus on the first Friday in May was odd. Yang couldn’t figure out what it was, and he didn’t try to. Tuesdays and Fridays were his busiest days, since he taught two sections of Military History and one of Ancient Earth. That was six hours of lecturing, and he barely had time to breathe, let alone figure out what the gossip was. He could hear it, though, when students trooped into class, before they got settled down. When Kircheis came in with Hilde, Yang, who had already been sitting on his customary table up front, hopped down to talk to him.

“Any clue what all the fuss is about, Cadet Kircheis?” Yang asked.

“Not really, sir,” Kircheis said. “I heard Staden didn’t hold his two SW classes for the engineering cohort today, though.”

“Really…” Yang rubbed his neck. “He never misses class.”

“A bunch of the senior professors are out today.”

“I wonder what happened.”

“Something big, I guess,” Kircheis said.

“Want me to ask my dad?” Hilde asked. “He’s at Neue Sanssouci.”

“I’m sure I’ll find out eventually,” Yang replied. “No point in worrying about it now.” He glanced the clock. “I should get started, or I’ll be just as guilty of not holding class as Staden is.”

His students were clearly in a state of anxiety, with many of them taking out their phones, or leaning towards their peers to whisper while Yang lectured. He couldn’t really blame them: as the weird atmosphere continued, he was tempted to take out  _ his _ phone and see what the news was. But then he remembered that he kept his phone in his office desk for precisely that reason, so he couldn’t. He tried not to let it get to him, and just continued speaking his way through the intricacies of Rudolph von Goldenbaum’s success against the Main Street Pirates, a topic that he didn’t care for in the least, but was obligated to cover.

He was half sprawled out across the table at the front, with one leg stretched far out in front of him, the other up, with his arm resting on his knee and his chin on his arm, when the door at the back of the classroom opened. He paid it no mind at first.

“Recall that Rudolph’s strategy involved small, mobile fleets placed in defensive positions around key planets. When word was received that pirates were in the area, they were able to quickly deploy--” 

His students at the rear of the room were standing. Yang couldn’t see what the fuss was, because the standing students had now blocked his view. He stopped speaking, though, and craned his neck to see. Coming down the stairs was von Steger, the head of the IOA, followed by a group of fleet soldiers, all visibly armed. Yang didn’t get up. If he was going to be shot to death in the front of his classroom, he was at least going to do it while sitting comfortably.

“Is there something I can do for you, Rear Admiral?” Yang asked as von Steger approached. 

Steger looked rather affronted by Yang’s posture, but he didn’t make a comment on that. “Fleet Admiral Muckenburger has requested your presence at the Ministry of War,” Steger said. “You’re to be escorted.”

Yang raised an eyebrow. “Any idea what this is about?”

“No,” Steger said.

“Well, if that’s all it is,” Yang said, and hopped off the table. As soon as his feet were on the floor, the soldiers surrounded him. They didn’t touch him, but they made it clear with their body language that they wanted him to walk forward.

Yang pushed through to the front of them for a second. “Er, class dismissed,” he said to the watching students. Some were horrified, some were amused, but most were confused. “Make sure you finish your essays for next class.” Nobody moved, waiting for Yang to be escorted out.

“Hank!” Hilde said, trying to get to him. Yang glanced at Kircheis, whose face was white as a sheet, and nodded at him. He grabbed Hilde’s shoulder and restrained her. The whole incident had taken less than five seconds, but it made Steger aware of Hilde’s presence, and he frowned deeply at first Hilde, then Yang.

Yang was escorted out of the building, where a car was parked along one of the driveable paths through campus. He was allowed to get into it under his own power which probably meant that he wasn’t being arrested. Steger didn’t get into the car, and none of the soldiers who had been sent to get him spoke at all, so the ride off campus was eerily silent. 

Of all of the people he knew, Yang had the worst sense of direction, but he had made the trip between the IOA and the Ministry of War enough times to know that that was indeed the path that the car was going on. It was some relief, to know that he hadn’t been lied to about that. He wondered if he really was going to see Fleet Admiral Muckenburger. 

He stared out the window at the grey afternoon and hoped that Kircheis would stop Hilde from being too alarmed. He wondered if he should have written a will, or something of the sort. It was far too late for all of that, now. 

The car pulled up in front of the Ministry of War building. Yang’s instinct was to walk around towards the back entrance, which was the closest one to where his old office in the PI unit had been, but he was shuffled out of the car and up the huge front steps, escorted through the huge marble lobby, and up the main staircase. So, they were going to Fleet Admiral Muckenburger. Yang was aware of the vague location of his office, though mainly to avoid it, since he had been ordered strictly to stay out of Muckenburger’s sight. He guessed that was out the window now.

The whole atmosphere of the Ministry of War was similar in its tension to what the students at the Academy had been feeling, though everyone here rushed about much more purposefully, clearly knowing what was going on. All the IOA students must have just been hearing vague rumors from their fathers or older brothers or cousins or former upperclassmen about what was going on here. Information tended to trickle like that. Yang was curious, and he tried to use that curiosity rather than fear.

They stopped short of the office that Yang suspected was Muckenburger’s, and instead ended up in front of a conference room, guarded by another soldier. “Sidearm?” the soldier said, intending to take his.

“Er, don’t carry one. I teach at the IOA.”

The guard looked to the soldiers next to Yang for confirmation, the leader of them nodded, and then the guard knocked on the door and allowed Yang into the room.

He saluted immediately, as neatly as he could. There was Fleet Admiral Muckenburger, a good number of the upper admiralty, what seemed like a few people he recognized from around the Ministry of War-- maybe from the Strategic Planning department, he thought-- and, to his surprise, Commodore Bronner.

Yang hastily sat down in the chair next to Bronner when Bronner pulled it out for him. Muckenburger shot him a look, but someone was at the front of the room going over slides on the projector, so he didn’t interrupt that.

Yang took a good look at what was being shown on the slides, and when he did, he felt odd, his hearing seeming to go as all the blood rushed from his head. There was Iserlohn fortress, surrounded by a glittering cloud of debris that was probably in the thousands of kilometers wide. The surface of the fortress, which was normally a smooth metal sphere, looking like nothing so much as a perfect glittering soap bubble in space, was horribly marred, with the liquid metal cover being completely gone in places, and huge gouges torn into where the floating gun platforms must have once traveled. He felt ill. His hands gathered up the fabric of his pants, nails digging into his skin.

Bronner must have noticed his tension, because on the tablet in front of him he typed, “We kept it,” and showed the message to Yang. He didn’t completely relax, but he was at least momentarily spared the worry that they were about to be invaded, having lost the only obstacle between the Free Planets’ Alliance and the Empire.

Yang hadn’t quite recovered his senses when the presenter sat back down at his seat, and Muckenburger took the meeting back over.

“So, our guest of dubious honor has arrived,” Muckenburger said and looked across the table at Yang. Yang flinched, startled.

“I apologize if you were waiting on me, sir,” Yang managed to get out. 

“No. I called you here because you appear to be the lynchpin of a little mystery.”

“Sir?”

“Do you know this man? Emmerling, bring up the photograph.” Yang turned to look at the projector again, grateful for the excuse to escape Muckenburger’s fierce stare. The man who had been giving the presentation flipped back through the slide deck rapidly, before landing on a picture of a dour looking man, with brown hair streaked with grey, and flat, artificial eyes above a pinched mouth.

“Yes, I do,” Yang said, startled. “That’s Commander Oberstein. He’s with the Iserlohn Stationed Fleet, I believe.”

Muckenbburger raised an eyebrow. “And how do you know Commander Oberstein?”

“We had a mutual acquaintance, and he introduced himself to me several years ago.” He looked around the table. “Is there some trouble…?”

This was apparently the wrong question to ask, because the table devolved into a controlled form of chaos, with everyone beginning to argue with their neighbor. Muckenburger held up his hand and the table fell silent again.

“Commander Oberstein provided Admiral Kleist with information that allowed his fleet to escape total destruction. One might argue that he saved Iserlohn and the majority of the Iserlohn Fleet.” Mukenburger paused for effect, which Bronner seemed to appreciate. “One might argue, as well, that since that information was provided while holding Admiral Kleist at gunpoint, he should be court martialed and shot.”

“Oh,” Yang said. He had his suspicions, but he had to ask. “Is there a reason you needed me, in particular, sir? Commander Oberstein is my friend, but we’re not exactly close.”

“I don’t have the patience for you to be smart with me, Leigh,” Muckenburger said. “Oberstein said that you were the one who provided the information that allowed him to act.”

Yang blanched a little. “I would not have told him to threaten a superior officer, sir.”

“But you did provide him with this.” Muckenburger slid a thick binder across the table. Yang caught it, hesitantly opened it, and found exactly what he had been expecting to find: his own plans for the Alliance attempt to capture Iserlohn, a copy of the same thing that he had provided to both Oberstein and Muckenburger, several years ago. He had almost forgotten about them.

“Let me ask you this outright,” Muckenburger said. “Are you a spy, Lieutenant Commander?”

“What? No, sir!” Yang was startled by this line of questioning, even more than he had been by the revelation that Oberstein had taken the fate of Iserlohn fortress into his own hands.

“Then explain to me how it is that you came to be in possession of an almost to-the letter account of how the rebel fleet would attempt to capture Iserlohn fortress.”

Yang rubbed the back of his neck. “I just thought about it, sir.” He looked at Bronner for help, but Bronner was too amused watching Yang suffer. “You know there are plans in there that didn’t get used.” He hesitantly pushed the binder back across the table. And then he couldn’t help himself. “Besides, sir, if I were a spy, why would I just give you all of this?”

“It’s true that he did seem to spontaneously generate this while working under me,” Bronner said, finally speaking up on Yang’s behalf.

“Commander Oberstein did say that you did not tell him what to do with the information you provided, which is one of the only reasons you are not currently joining him in a holding cell, and instead are having a friendly talk here,” Muckenburger said. Friendly was not the term that Yang would have used. The hostility towards him in the room was palpable.

“I’m grateful that you believed him,” Yang said cautiously.

“Would you be able to walk us through how exactly you ‘spontaneously generated’ these plans?”

“Which one, sir? I, er, still don’t know exactly what happened to Iserlohn.”

“The parallel pursuit strategy.” Muckenburger said. “With the missiles.”

“Oh, yeah, I did think that one had the best shot at succeeding,” Yang said. He rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, I can explain it.” He was forced to lean across the table to grab the binder that he had discarded, and he flipped through it towards the front page. “Er, do you mind?” he asked, gesturing to the projector.

“Be our guest,” Muckenburger said, his voice as dry as sand.

Yang very awkwardly stood and went to the front of the room. He fumbled with the binder, sliding it under the document camera. He stared at it blankly for a second, trying to recall what his thought process had been while writing it, then gave up on that and just tried to bring to mind what information he had on Admiral Sithole, working to recreate it from what he knew. Yang tried to relax, tried to forget about the fact that he was giving this presentation to one of the highest ranking officials in the Empire, and instead just began to deliver it as though he were speaking to his classes at the IOA, walking them through.

“So, I made the assumption that Admiral Sithole would be the next logical choice to lead an assault on Iserlohn-- which already requires a little unpacking. First: Iserlohn. Why is it necessary for the rebel fleet to attack through Iserlohn?” 

Yang was a good off-the-cuff lecturer, but he could see several people at the table begin to go cross-eyed the further he got into it, and Bronner was not amused almost immediately by Yang beginning with a digression. Muckenburger was patient, though, steepling his fingers and just listening to what Yang had to say as he walked through his whole assessment of the possible battle, which had become real. 

A fake battle making its way into the real world-- the thought gave Yang a strange sensation in the lower part of his spine, like he had somehow crossed a divide. Things were not so academic anymore, and he could no longer pretend that he was not, in at least this way, a loyal soldier of the Empire. He had helped them win. He had provided information that changed the course of the battle, for the better. What an odd thought. Was that a betrayal? A betrayal of what?

Yang managed to keep all those thoughts off his face and out of his voice as he delivered his lecture. He made sure to go into detail about why he thought that the fortress commander might be forced to use the Thor Hammer against their own fleet.

He interrupted himself. “Can I ask-- was that what Commander Oberstein was trying to stop?”

“Yes,” Muckenburger said.

“And did he?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good,” Yang said. That was a relief. His original plan would have ended there, with the pyrrhic victory or loss, but he was glad that the stationed fleet soldiers hadn’t simply been sacrificial lambs. “I assume that Commander Oberstein told Admiral Kleist to scatter the fleet, and then Admiral Wartenburg fired the Thor Hammer on the rebel fleet?”

“Yes, that’s what happened.”

“Okay. Then that would pretty much be the end of things. Er, does anyone have any questions?” He stood rubbing his head very awkwardly.

“Do you expect that they could use this tactic again in the future?” Muckenburger asked.

“You need to unify command at Iserlohn,” Yang said. “And make sure communications are as robust as possible to stop that from being a problem. Message relay satellites every hundred kilometers throughout the corridor if necessary. But no, I don’t know if they’ll use this specific tactic again.” He paused. “Well, they’ve used the overwhelming force tactic several times to no success, so they might keep trying it. But every time they do try it, you’ll know better how to defeat it. It was probably best when it had the element of surprise.”

Muckenburger nodded. “And what do you think they’ll try next?”

“Er, I couldn’t say, sir. When I came up with all of this I was working under Commodore Bronner. I had access to a lot more information than I do now.” He waved his hand generally in the vicinity of his binder. “And I had a reason to think about all of this.”

Muckenburger considered him silently for a second, and Yang thought he was going to say something else, but he didn’t. “Any other questions?” Yang asked.

There was a general silence from the table, so Yang slunk back to his seat, taking the binder from the document camera with him, and managing to almost trip over his chair as he sat down.

Muckenburger seemed done with him, so the conversation around the table shifted to how to best reinforce Iserlohn, to prevent a follow up attack. Yang listened, but didn’t think that there would be a follow up attack, and didn’t care much for logistics, so it didn’t interest him as much as it should have.

At the end of the meeting, everyone saluted Muckenburger and he left. Bronner tried to talk to Yang, but Yang slipped out of his grasp and headed for the door. He saw Muckenburger vanish around a corner, and Yang jogged after him.

“Fleet Admiral!” Yang called.

Muckenburger stopped, clearly annoyed. “You have fifteen seconds to say what you need to say, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Please don’t punish Commander Oberstein,” Yang said, slightly out of breath. “Blame me for what he did if you want, but don’t court martial him. Please, sir.”

“He threatened to kill Admiral Kleist,” Muckenburger said.

“He saved the lives of thousands of soldiers,” Yang pleaded. “Do you care about discipline more than you care about--”

“You should be careful not to insinuate what I care or do not care about,” Muckenburger said. “Discipline, von Leigh, is what makes an army function. It is something that you seem to lack.” Muckenburger turned to go down the hallway again.

“Sir, please consider it!” Yang called after him.

Muckenburger stopped and turned back, exasperation written clear on his sideburned face. “Are you going to threaten high command with a gun to get what you want as well, von Leigh?”

Yang was shocked by the question. He spread his arms. “I’m a teacher, sir. I don’t even carry a sidearm.”

Muckenburger stared at him for a second. “Do not follow me, Leigh. You’re not helping your case.” And then he left, leaving Yang standing in the hallway, rather dejected.

Bronner came up behind him, and, once Muckenburger had left earshot, said, “You love to stick your little neck on the line, don’t you.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” Yang asked.

“Read your script and don’t ad-lib,” Bronner said. He shook his head. “You have a unique ability to turn a moment where you come out looking competent into one where you look like a disaster. You should have just smiled and taken whatever promotion he was going to give you.”

Yang scowled. “And you’re one to give advice.”

“As your mentor, and the person who was pointing this all out to Muckenburger for years, I’m sure somehow I’ll make rear admiral out of this,” Bronner said with a grim smile. He began walking, and waited for Yang to follow him. “Come on. If you stay in this building you’re going to make a fool of yourself in front of somebody else important.”

Yang trudged after him.

“You should come back to working for me,” Bronner said as they headed for the exit.

“I thought you didn’t like me.”

“Oh, I hate your guts, Leigh. But you’re smart, and you clearly have an uncanny knack for strategy.”

“I like being a teacher,” Yang said.

“No glory in it.”

“If I was glory seeking, I would be a very different man. And I think you’d like me worse.”

“Perhaps.”

They exited the building together into the warm and waning afternoon light. “Why do you care what happens to that Oberstein, anyway?”

“He was friendly to me at a time when very few other people were,” Yang said. “He’s an honest man. And a good one.” He kicked at the ground, his hands in his pockets, as they headed down the steps side by side. “To have him imprisoned or killed because he saved people’s lives… I think it’s just not fair, sir.”

“Has life ever been fair, Leigh?”

“If I can possibly pay the price of personal embarrassment to make the world more fair, and to stop my friend’s life from being ruined, I’d pay that price every day of my life.”

“Would he do the same for you?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Yang said. “That’s not what this is about.” He thought that Oberstein probably would, though not for the same reasons, and that thought made Yang distinctly uncomfortable.

“You’re a strange man.”

Yang shook his head. “I know.”

“Do you want a ride home?” Bronner asked. 

“No, I’ll just walk to the train,” Yang said. “It’s nice weather.”

“Suit yourself.” Bronner started to go back across the parking lot. Yang turned and walked away, but he hadn’t gone very far when Bronner called out to him again. “Leigh!” Yang turned. Bronner was standing in between the rows of black cars, light glinting off their hoods and mirrors onto his uniform. He seemed surprised at something, maybe at the fact that he had called out, or the fact that Yang had turned. “Good job. I mean it.”

“Thank you, sir,” Yang said.

“Nobody else was going to say it, so I guess I had to. Don’t expect to hear that from me again.”

“Okay, sir.” Yang smiled. Bronner waved his hand dismissively, then turned away for good, getting into one of the parked cars. Yang hated the fact that he liked Bronner’s approval, but he liked it nonetheless.

* * *

A few days later, one of Yang’s landladies handed him an envelope. It had the imperial fleet seal on it, and he thanked her and went upstairs to read it. He stood in front of the window, the light fading, but he didn’t want to turn on the electric light just yet, and it was too warm to light a proper fire, so he held the letter to the light and clumsily ripped it open.

He had neither hoped for, nor expected, a promotion, but there it was, in plain black type. He had made commander within four years of graduating from the IOA, for no reason that he could really comprehend. But when he looked there, down at the bottom of the letter, there was the personal recommendation from Fleet Admiral Muckenburger. 

_ Von Leigh provided a great service to the crown, showing loyalty and ability far above his station. He is a man with clear talent that should be used to its fullest potential. Although he was appointed to his current position by His Majesty, I suggest that Leigh transfer to a more active posting within the next several years. This promotion to Commander befits both Leigh’s past accomplishments and his future potential. _

Yang folded the letter, not quite neatly. It would go in the desk drawer where he kept his other promotion letters, one signed by Merkatz, the other by the kaiser himself. For now, though, he stared out the window, watching the clouds darken and gather. He didn’t like this promotion. Perhaps he had been able to save the lives of thousands of people in the Iserlohn stationed fleet, and he wished he could focus on only that, but nothing else about what he had done was sitting right with him.

He wanted to go back to thinking of nothing but teaching, but the outside world threatened to break into the safe walls of the IOA. He half laughed at himself for considering that place safe in the first place. It was a small world, a microcosm of the Empire itself, and he was no safer there than he was anywhere else. He was no less dangerous there than he was anywhere else, either.

Unbidden, his thoughts went all the way back to his freshman year, when it seemed like false battles were his entire life. Reuenthal had asked him what kind of ambitions he had.

Yang stared out the window. The light was almost gone, now, and the trees at the edge of the garden were vanishing into the darkness.

He was a man with the wrong kind of ambitions, then. But now… He had shown loyalty. He had proven himself in Muckenburger’s eyes. Was he really falling into the same trap that he had tried to warn Kircheis about? Was a lack of ambition allowing people to move him around like a pawn?

Yang turned away from the window into the darkness of his bedroom and fumbled for the lightswitch on the wall. The electric light cleared away the darkness and replaced it with alarmingly harsh lines. He looked at the letter in his hands.

“Do I have to write Muckenburger a thank you letter?” he asked aloud. “Maybe that would just annoy him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ghost of Reuenthal hangs heavy over this chapter as well.
> 
> Yang "yeah just go look up the treason I did. if you can figure it out that's cool" Wenli.
> 
> Kircheis needs to learn to be an independent guy. Unfortunately, he's sorta attached himself to Yang on one end and Martin on the other, so there's not really much independence happening here haha. Yang is sorta enjoying taking the more active/mentor role-- "becoming the interested rather than the interesting". Of course, at that point in the chapter, he feels like he's navigating his life very smoothly, feeling like he's done a normal amount of treason in the past, that he's quietly doing good for his students by impressing critical thinking on them now... He's got his life on lock.
> 
> Of course that lasts like two whole scenes lol. Being reminded of his actual role as a servant of the empire really knocks the wind out of him.
> 
> It's the return of Oberstein, kinda.
> 
> Anyway, I love Yang, Kircheis, and Hilde. Great and fun little squad haha.
> 
> Thank you to Lydia for the beta read <3 Original science fiction @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven and original mystery @ bit.ly/arcadispark . I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter. See ya!


	13. Historiography

_ May 483 IC, Odin _

“I heard the interesting rumor that there’s a ghost haunting your classroom,” Staden said to Yang, sitting down across from him in the faculty dining hall at lunch on Wednesday. Dappled light was streaming in through the open windows, and the faint breeze caused the white tablecloths to dance around the edges of the tables.

Yang looked up, nonplussed. “A ghost?”

“About this tall, pale as a sheet, certainly not a living student of the IOA, calling out ‘Hank, Hank!’ very mournfully. A ghost.”

Yang cringed. “You mean Hildegarde von Mariendorf.”

“So you know the identity of this ghost?”

“Her father is a friend of mine. And I suppose she’s my friend, as well.”

“Can you explain what a girl is doing in your classroom?”

“Taking my class,” Yang said. “How did you hear about this?”

“I just interrogated several of the freshmen who were placing bets on how much longer it will be before you get fired and, presumably, exiled to a frontier outpost to languish for the rest of your career.”

“How generous of them. I hope that they make good money off of my misfortune.”

“I’m going to have a meeting with Steger this afternoon.”

Yang took a sip of his tea. “Steger knows about Fraulein Mariendorf. I assume since he hasn’t said anything to me, he doesn’t actually care that much.”

“Not about that,” Staden said.

“Then I’m not sure why you’re telling me about what you’re doing with Steger.”

“I’m going back to the front,” Staden said.

Yang raised his eyebrows, very startled. “Why?”

“Many factors. I probably won’t stay on the front for long, but I would like to finish my career in active service, rather than here.”

“Thinking of retiring?”

“The pension of a flag officer is much better than that of a captain,” Staden said. “I have a few good years left in me yet. And I think students here are more likely to give me an aneurysm than the rebels are to put a hole in me.”

Yang laughed. “So you’re handing in your notice?”

“I am.”

“I’ll be sad to see you go,” Yang said.

“Maybe.” Staden took a sip of his own coffee. “I’m recommending that you take my position.”

“What?” Yang put down his cup. “Why?”

“I was called into the Ministry of War last week as well, to give my opinion on several former students of mine,” he said, then paused. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by what I heard there, but I was. You have a talent for strategy that is clearly unmatched. It would be a shame to waste it.”

“I like teaching history,” Yang whined. 

“It’s an unfortunate fact that the world does not care what you like, Leigh.”

“Why would you do this to me?”

“I don’t think that there’s anyone else who could do my job half as well as you could. Besides, I’m sure you’ll probably be allowed to keep your Ancient Earth elective, if you want it.”

“And I don’t get a choice?”

“You were put here by order of the kaiser. I believe that Fleet Admiral Muckenburger would be more than happy to have you moved back to the Ministry of War, or to the front lines, even, but he can’t without risking the kaiser having a problem with it. But Steger can shuffle you around internally. You should count yourself lucky.”

Yang scowled. “You should have suggested someone else.”

“Consider this payment for the fact that I found you an excellent position with my friend Merkatz, and you immediately went and ruined it.”

“Didn’t you say that I’ve been promoted the fastest of anyone in my class? I’d hardly say that’s ruining it.”

“You got promoted to get rid of you, and then because the kaiser liked you. This is the first time you’ve done anything worthy of said promotion. You’re not usually so full of yourself, ‘Fleet Admiral.’”

Yang cringed. “I really can’t make you change your mind?”

“If you hate the posting enough after a few years, you can always ask to leave the IOA,” Staden said with a grim smile. 

“And if I asked to be reassigned to the front right now just to spite you?”

“You won’t,” Staden said. “And it would hardly be spiting me. Give it at least a try of a few years, will you? You would probably like it.”

“Says the person who complains about it constantly.”

“There is no student alive who is a match for your level of absurdity, so you should be able to handle them all much better than I can. Besides, teaching the practicum will get you respect from the students faster than teaching a first year history course does.”

“I don’t really care about that.”

“Maybe you should.”

“And how will people feel if I keep letting Hildegarde von Mariendorf attend my classes, once they’re the top senior level practicum, and she crushes them all in matches?”

Staden raised an eyebrow. “Now that, I’d like to see.”

“No, you don’t. You’d only claim she was giving you a headache.”

Staden laughed. “You and all your friends, Leigh.”

* * *

Yang was sitting outside in the garden behind his boarding house, gloomily reading a book on strategy in preparation for his eventual takeover of the SW practicum, when his phone rang. The weather was fabulously warm, the perfect kind of late-spring evening, and aside from the fact that his peaceful tenure as a history professor would soon be over, he was enjoying the end of the semester very much.

He was tempted to ignore the ringing phone, but it kept on buzzing and jingling, so he fished it out of his pocket and looked at the name on the caller ID. He was very surprised to see who it was, and he answered immediately.

“Mittermeyer!” he said, pleased.

“Leigh, I’m standing outside your house. Can you let me in?”

Yang scrambled to his feet, dropping his book on the dented old lawn chair he had been reclining on, and ran to peer over the fence towards the street. “Mittermeyer! Over here!” He waved at his friend, then unlocked the rusty garden gate. He hung up the phone as Mittermeyer walked over.

Mittermeyer looked exhausted, and he was carrying a suitcase and wearing his uniform, now with a lieutenant commander’s stripes on his shoulders. He smiled wanly at Yang and entered the garden, looking at the discarded pile of candy wrappers that Yang had left on the table next to the lawn chair, some of which were starting to flutter away in the wind.

“Did you just get off the plane?” Yang asked. “I didn’t know you were going to be on leave so soon.” He dragged another garden chair over so that Mittermeyer could sit, which he did.

“Can I stay with you for a little while?” This was an abrupt question, but Yang had said in the past that his door was open to any of his friends, so he didn’t mind Mittermeyer asking at all.

“Of course,” Yang said. “Don’t want to stay with your family?”

Mittermeyer was silent for a little bit too long. “I’ve actually been on Odin for a couple days,” he said.

“You should have called me.” He tried not to sound admonishing, but the tone in Mittermeyer’s voice concerned him. Mittermeyer had his hands in his pockets, and he was leaning back on the garden chair, staring up into the cloudless blue sky.

“I’ve--” He broke off his sentence. Yang sat up, very concerned now, and looked at him. 

“What happened, Mittermeyer?”

“Am I a bad person, Leigh?”

“You know I don’t think you are. What’s going on?”

Mittermeyer didn’t meet his eyes. “I did something impulsive. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

“What did you do?” He had a sinking feeling in his gut.

“I proposed to Evangeline,” Mittermeyer said.

If it had been anyone else, Yang would have said congratulations, but the combination of hesitancy, pain, and confusion in Mittermeyer’s voice made him simply say, “And she said yes?”

“Yeah.” Mittermeyer looked down at his hands.

“Why did you ask her?”

“I couldn’t keep facing my parents without doing it,” he said. “Just--the way they were looking at me, like that was the only thing that could make them happy.”

“You already know what I would say,” Yang said, “so I’m not going to lecture you.”

“Thanks.”

“You proposed, and then you ran back here? Does she know where you went?”

“I told my mother that I thought it was inappropriate for us to live in the same house before we got married, and then I left.”

Yang was silent for a second. “Did it make your parents happy?”

“It made my father happy. He watched me propose.”

“And now what are you going to do?”

“Marry her, I guess.”

“You could say you changed your mind.”

“And then I would be back exactly where I was before. Worse, even.”

“Would it be worse?”

“Leigh--I…”

“Wolf,” Yang said, which shocked Mittermeyer enough to get him to look at him. “It’s your life, not your mother’s, not your father’s, not Evangeline’s, not even Reuenthal’s. It’s certainly not mine, so I’m not going to tell you what you should do. But you seem miserable, and you’re my friend, and I don’t want you to be miserable.” He shook his head. 

“I know,” Mittermeyer said. “You tell me that often enough.”

“Is me saying that actually helping? It doesn’t seem to.”

“Every time you say anything to me, it seems very clear, and then I get out of your sight and everything goes back to being the way it was before. It’s the same thing when I feel like I’ve made some kind of choice. There’s this moment of just--clarity, or something--and I do what I think I need to, and then when it’s over I--” He looked away, down at the ground. “I’m not very good at expressing anything, am I?”

“It’s fine,” Yang said. “I get it.”

“Do you?”

Yang smiled a little, but it was a sad expression. “You’ve yelled at me for making spur of the moment decisions in the past. That split second insight can be incomprehensible to someone else.”

Mittermeyer was silent.

“Look, we can not talk about it for a while. I’ll order dinner so my landladies don’t get mad at me for having a guest who wants to eat, that should help.”

“Will it?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not like not eating dinner will feel any better. Come on.” Yang stood, then offered Mittermeyer a hand to help him to his feet. Mittermeyer hesitated a second, then took it, and Yang pulled him up off the lawn chair. 

“Thanks, Leigh.”

“No problem,” Yang said, squeezing Mittermeyer’s hand, then letting it drop. “Let’s go inside.”

It was later, after dinner, when Yang was debating which blanket and pillow to give Mittermeyer to sleep on his couch with, when he brought up the subject again. Since he only owned two comforters, the one he had been using since he was a student at the IOA, and the fantastically nice one that Magdalena had given him as a solstice gift (after opining about the state of Yang’s home decor), he didn’t actually have much choice to make. Yang never used it because he thought it was too nice, and he didn’t want to accidentally get it dirty by eating in bed, and then have to figure out how to wash it. He handed the silk comforter to Mittermeyer, who was sitting on the couch, then sat down next to him.

“Look, Mittermeyer,” Yang began, anxiously rubbing the back of his head. “Have you told Reuenthal?”

The room was dim, lit only by the banked fire in the hearth. Mittermeyer turned away, the dim red light touching his cheeks and eyelashes. “No.”

“Did you ever tell him you were breaking things off with him?”

“No,” he said again.

“Are you going to break things off with him?”

“I have to, don’t I?”

Yang was silent for a second. “You at least have to tell him that you’ve proposed to Evangeline. There are any number of ways things could go after that.”

Mittermeyer shook his head. “I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “Do you want me to tell Reuenthal for you?”

“Would you?”

“If you wanted me to. Or if I thought you were going to try to keep it a secret. He deserves to know.”

“I’ll send him a message. His leave isn’t until July.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. Okay, Leigh?”

“Sorry.”

Mittermeyer leaned forward, putting his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, his long hair falling around his face.

“You should tell Evangeline,” Yang said.

“Tell her what?” Mittermeyer’s voice was bitter, though muffled through his hands.

“About Reuenthal.”

“And then what will happen, Leigh? You think she’ll just say, ‘Oh, that’s fine-- go ahead and continue to risk your career doing something illegal. Go ahead and cheat on me.’ Or maybe she’ll break off the engagement because of it. Or maybe she’ll be so suspicious of it ever happening again that I’ll never even be able to--” He cut himself off. Yang waited for him to resume talking. “Tell me I’m stupid, Leigh.”

“I won’t.”

“You should.”

“Why?”

“I remember what I was thinking, when I decided to propose to her,” Mittermeyer said after a second. “I thought-- I imagined-- everything would be okay if I could just  _ see  _ him. Just talk to him. It wouldn’t matter if… If I need… Evangeline would be there, and that would be fine.”

His words were coming out in an incoherent tumble, but Yang let him talk it out. He supposed he understood what Mittermeyer meant, in a way. After all, what had he been doing for years? Being happy to be near Reuenthal, but careful never to cross a line into something else. It was possible to be happy like that. Not easy, but possible. He looked at Mittermeyer and wondered if Mittermeyer had taken him as a role model in that specific way. He felt slightly sick at the thought.

“And I thought-- she is beautiful, and I do like her, and she’s too good for me, but she loves me anyway-- so I had to do something.” His voice was strained. “I wish I could un-open that door-- the one where I love--” And then Mittermeyer fell silent, aside from his rough breaths as he tried to compose himself.

Hesitantly, not sure if he would appreciate the gesture, Yang reached over and wrapped his arm around Mittermeyer’s shoulder. Mittermeyer leaned into the touch, though, his shoulder against Yang’s. Mittermeyer was fiercely warm, Yang realized. His hand on Mittermeyer’s back felt hotter than his hand on his own knee, which was facing the lit fire. Yang felt the shifting lines of tension in Mittermeyer’s body as he gently rubbed his shoulder.

“How do you put up with me, Leigh?” Mittermeyer asked, almost too quiet to hear.

Yang knew the answer to that question, and it involved carefully stuffing all of his own selfish thoughts down into the deepest recesses of his heart, but he wasn’t going to say that, so he said, “Because you’re my friend,” which was also true.

* * *

By some miracle the next morning, that miracle being his alarm clock, Yang woke up before Mittermeyer. As Yang stumbled around his apartment in his pyjamas, travelling from bedroom to bathroom to shower, he saw Mittermeyer still soundly asleep on his couch, blanket tossed onto the floor, one leg dangling off the edge of the couch, Mittermeyer’s head on his arm, and the pillow clutched to his bare chest. He seemed peaceful there, in the early morning light streaming through the window. Yang watched him breathe for a second, hearing the occasional soft snore, then shook his head and went to shower.

When he was done, Mittermeyer was awake. “Hey,” he said as Yang towelled his hair off on his walk back to his bedroom.

“Morning,” Yang said.

“Sorry about last night.”

“Don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”

“Being a mess.”

“It’s fine. We all have our moments.”

“You don’t.”

“Hah. You just haven’t seen me at my worst.” Yang vanished into his bedroom to dress, and by time he came back out, Mittermeyer was in the bathroom.

Yang snuck downstairs, trying not to get caught by his landladies, and gathered up coffee and muffins from the kitchen to bring back up to his room for Mittermeyer.

“Do things feel any better now that you’ve slept on it?” Yang asked through a bite of muffin. “Or are you still...you know?”

“I’m less likely to run a couple hundred kilometers away now,” he said. “So I suppose that’s an improvement. Thanks for breakfast.”

“That is good,” Yang said. He glanced at his phone for the time. “I have to get going-- it’s finals week at the IOA.”

“Glad I’m not taking a final.”

Yang pointed at a stack of papers on the desk at the other side of the room. “Could take my Ancient Earth exam if you need something to amuse yourself with.”

“I’d rather not, thanks.”

Yang laughed. “Suit yourself.” He finished his muffin and searched through the drawers of his desk for the spare key to his room. He tossed it to Mittermeyer, who caught it deftly, even though he was holding a cup of coffee in his other hand. “Here. The spare outside door key is underneath the little statue of the frog, but honestly the door is never locked. If you need to go somewhere, at least you’ll be able to come back in.”

“Appreciate it.”

“I gotta go, or I’m gonna be late,” Yang said. He pulled down his outer uniform jacket and pulled it on. Mittermeyer looked at him.

“Leigh, you didn’t tell me you got promoted.”

Yang rubbed his head awkwardly. “Well, it’s kinda a stupid story,” he said. “I was trying to figure out-- well, nevermind, I’ll tell you about it later, I’ve gotta go.”

And he dashed out the door before he was forced to explain the circumstances under which he had been promoted. 

Yang was able to avoid thinking about everything for most of the day, busy with proctoring and then beginning to grade his set of final exams, but was confronted with a reality he did not expect when he left the IOA grounds for the evening. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he took it out, expecting it to be Mittermeyer suggesting that they get blindingly drunk at a nearby bar. Instead, it was a message from an unexpected, but definitely not unwelcome, source.

Oberstein was apparently free and on Odin. Yang hastily texted back. Oberstein was waiting for him in Eaglehead park, so Yang diverted from his normal course towards the train station, and through the park’s wrought iron gates.

Oberstein looked the same as Yang remembered him, except he was out of uniform, and he was slowly ripping up the remains of a sandwich to toss at some pigeons pecking at the gravel a yard or so in front of the bench where he was seated. The brilliant afternoon light wasn’t doing anything positive for Oberstein’s complexion, which was generously describable as ‘wan.’

“Commander Oberstein,” Yang said, catching his attention. “You wouldn’t believe how relieved I am to see you.”

The pigeons scattered as Yang sat down next to him. Yang was a little put out by the fact that the birds didn’t seem to like him, but a few more tosses of bread from Obserstein had them coming right back, as long as Yang didn’t make any unexpected moves.

“I find myself in your debt,” Oberstein said. “Several times over. I have done nothing to deserve the amount of thought that you spare for me.” He wasn’t looking at Yang as he said this, but it was delivered in the same flat tones that Oberstein said everything in.

“Don’t worry about it. Besides, we’re friends, so--” Yang shrugged.

“Are we, Commander Leigh?”

“I believe I said we were last time we spoke. I don’t see why that should have changed.”

“Very well.”

“What are you doing back on Odin?”

“I’ve been put on administrative leave, pending an investigation.”

“Any idea what the results of that investigation will be?”

“I expect to be put back into my position, perhaps less a rank.”

“Oh, that’s fine, then,” Yang said. “I’m glad you’re no longer in, er, I believe Muckenburger called it a holding cell.”

“As am I,” Oberstein said, though he didn’t sound very enthusiastic one way or the other. “I should congratulate you on your promotion.”

“Considering it’s the only one I’ve actually deserved, it hardly is worth congratulating me on…” Yang said, staring up into the sky.

“You performed well under Merkatz before El Facil, and you performed the duties expected of you in the PI unit. Both of those things would have earned you promotions eventually,” Oberstein said.

“I’m mostly just surprised I got it, since I went out of my way to annoy Muckenburger,” Yang said with an anxious-sounding laugh. “After he told me years ago to stay out of his way.”

“So I heard. Thank you.” 

Yang didn’t have a response to Oberstein’s flat gratitude, so he asked, “What’s going on on Iserlohn?”

“Major rebuilding efforts. And Kleist and Wartenburg are both being reassigned. There will be staff shakeups in general.”

“Do you want to go back there?”

“It’s a good place to be,” Oberstein said. “I have no objection to it, though I hope that my next commanding officer will be of a higher caliber than Kleist is.”

“If only we could choose.”

“You have been lucky thus far.”

“That’s true,” Yang said. “I have no right to complain whatsoever.”

“If I may say something,” Oberstein began.

“Of course.”

“You yourself would be an officer I would be pleased to serve under. It would be to the benefit of many if you were to continue to rise.”

Yang made a slightly annoyed face. “I like my posting at the IOA.”

“That may be the case, and you may do some good there for the students, but there is more that you could do in the galaxy by going elsewhere.”

“Why don’t you take your own advice?”

Oberstein didn’t react to this comment, which Yang had intended as slightly inflammatory. “I am not a man who is easy to promote.”

“Why not? Don’t you do good work?”

“Being proficient and well liked are both necessary for rapid promotion, and arguably the second one is more so.”

“People don’t like me, either,” Yang said.

Oberstein turned to look at him for the first time, his artificial eyes becoming slightly translucent when the afternoon sun shone through them at the right angle, revealing faint traces of the circuitry beneath. “You should see yourself as others see you.”

“I would prefer not to,” Yang said.

“Why not?”

“The ego isn’t meant to handle the unfiltered truth of how other people perceive you. Besides, I know exactly how other people think of me. They’re loud enough about it, most of the time.”

“I’m not referring to people who dismiss you as a foreigner,” Oberstein said. “I am referring to those whose respect you have earned. They see potential in you.”

Yang stared out across the park, tempted to kick a pebble but not wanting to scare away the pigeons. Oberstein was running out of sandwich to throw to them. “And you are saying that Fleet Admiral Muckenburger and the kaiser are both on that list of people.”

“Yes.”

“How am I supposed to feel about that?” Yang asked. “You understand me.”

“I believe I do.”

“It seems contrary to, well, everything about myself that the kaiser and the fleet admiral should see something in me. I don’t want to be seen at all.”

“You should use it to your advantage,” Oberstein said.

Yang scowled. “I don’t want the advantages of the Goldenbaum dynasty. It feels--” He cut himself off, remembering suddenly that they were in a public park, where several IOA students were lounging on the grass not twenty meters distant.

Oberstein tossed the remainder of his bread to the birds. “You were willing to sacrifice your life, once, and you risked your position for my sake. Why is it much harder to put your feelings aside to gain a position that will benefit you? The higher you are, the wider your reach and influence, the more good you can do.”

Yang was quiet for a second. “It’s like-- I’m climbing this ladder, but the rungs are made of bones, and the ropes are made of gut, and at the top there’s just someone endlessly adding to the chain.” He looked down at his hands. “I feel like participating in it-- that blood is on my hands, too.”

“You will pay it back a hundredfold.”

“I don’t think there’s any way to,” Yang said. “All of this is built on the past.” He craned his neck to look behind them. There was a statue of Rudolph von Goldenbaum towards the other side of the park-- he was grateful that Oberstein had chosen a park bench fairly far away from it, but now he wanted to see it. “And no matter how much you study the past, or explain it, or write about it-- people who died are still dead, people who were hurt are still hurt. You can’t fix it.  You can describe something as injustice, but that’s not creating justice.”

“But you have a chance to create the future.”

“That isn’t helping the past anyway.”

“They’re beyond help or further harm, then,” Oberstein said. “So there is no reason to not use what you can. The blood is not on your hands. It’s on theirs.” And there was a quiet, flat vitriol in Oberstein’s voice that Yang wasn’t sure he had heard before. It was a little disturbing.

“But if I don’t succeed? Then I’ll just be adding to all that.”

Oberstein looked at him, catching his eyes as Yang turned back away from the statue. “Some people pay the price of being reviled by the future,” Oberstein said. “It’s one that I would pay.”

Yang was silent for a long second. “I don’t know.”

“When the time comes, you will know what to do,” Oberstein said. “You did before, and you will again.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He turned his head away from Oberstein’s piercing gaze, then tried to change the topic. “Where are you staying while on Odin?”

“My family’s home, in the capital.”

“Oh, I wasn’t aware that-- well, I guess it’s stupid to say I didn’t know you had a family.”

“I don’t. I am the last of the von Oberstein line.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. History will not mourn if the line ends with me.”

Yang stood. “Would you like to come to dinner? I have a friend staying at my house that I’d like you to meet.”

“If you like.”

Yang smiled and stood, causing the pigeons to scatter, affronted by his sudden movement. “Excellent. I’ll text Mittermeyer and tell him where to meet us.”

“Wolfgang Mittermeyer, I presume?”

“Yes-- did Eisenach mention him?”

“Once or twice.”

Oberstein and Yang made their way back to the city center on the train, not really speaking after they left the relative privacy of their park bench. Yang was happy to have Oberstein’s quiet companionship-- he felt the man understood him in a way that few others did; maybe Hilde came closest, but she was a child. Even though they did not see eye to eye on some things, Yang felt like their goals were aligned, though they hadn’t spoken them directly, as nothing could be spoken directly. Perhaps they were a good balance for each other, Yang thought; things that seemed very clear to Yang seemed muddy to Oberstein, and the opposite was also true.

They met Mittermeyer at a restaurant that Yang liked, and Yang made the introductions. Mittermeyer seemed mostly confused by Oberstein, looking between Yang and the thin and stiff man who sat upright in the booth next to Yang’s weird contorted sprawl. Seeing Mittermeyer sit alone at the other side of the table made Yang suddenly and deeply wish that Reuenthal was here, as well, but that would have probably made the situation worse.

They talked about nothing in particular, mostly comparing their shared experiences at the IOA to Yang’s teaching, Oberstein’s assignment on Iserlohn to Mittermeyer’s experience on a starship construction facility, and other things of that nature. It was fairly pleasant, if mundane, talk, and Oberstein was very careful not to mention anything about what he and Yang had been discussing before. Yang appreciated that, since, although he trusted Mittermeyer, he suspected that Mittermeyer would not want any of what Yang was thinking about dumped on his plate.

After dinner, Yang proposed going to a bar, which was an idea that Mittermeyer seconded, but Oberstein politely declined. They stood on the corner of the street to say their goodbyes.

“You’ll be on Odin for a while?” Yang asked.

“I would think,” Oberstein said.

“Then we should see each other again.” He smiled at Oberstein, who nodded. “Have a nice night.”

“You as well. Pleasure to meet you, Mittermeyer.”

“Uh, yeah,” Mittermeyer said, less-than-enthusiastically shaking hands with Oberstein, who then turned and swiftly vanished from sight.

Yang and Mittermeyer walked towards the nearest bar. “Who was that?” Mittermeyer asked.

“Commander Paul von Oberstein…?” Yang said, very confused, since he had introduced him by name to Mittermeyer.

“No, I mean,  _ who _ is he?”

“Just a friend. I met him when he was on Iserlohn. Eisenach knows him.”

“There’s no accounting for taste, I guess,” Mittermeyer said.

“You don’t like him?”

“There’s something off about him.”

“I’ll admit he’s not-- well, I wouldn’t bring him to a dinner party. But I don’t like going to dinner parties either. I can’t hold that against him.”

“I didn’t like the way he looked at you.”

“He was looking at me?”

“Yeah.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know,” Mittermeyer said. “Like he wants something out of you.”

Yang glanced at Mittermeyer, amused as they walked. “I highly doubt--”

“Not like that. I don’t know.”

“Well, forget about it,” Yang said. “I suppose it’s not a requirement that all my friends also be friends with each other.”

Mittermeyer laughed at him and they entered the bar. By the time next morning rolled around, Yang could barely remember Mittermeyer’s misgivings over the splitting headache he acquired.

* * *

_ July 483 IC, Odin _

It was the hottest summer in living memory on that part of Odin. Yang’s boarding house room was not air conditioned, and with the window open, everything felt humid and sticky, with every paper lying limp on the table and Yang’s hair sticking to his face with perspiration that did nothing but make him miserable. There was the hope of relief with thick clouds forming up on the horizon, promising the kind of summer thunderstorm that everyone looked forward to as collective and private catharsis. 

Yang was trying to focus on putting together lesson plans for the upcoming school year, but instead was alternating between staring out the window at the trees shaking in the grey wind, and picking up his phone to check his messages every few seconds.

Reuenthal was supposed to be coming back to Odin today, and they had agreed to meet for dinner. He was just waiting for the text to tell him where and when, and he had been waiting for that all day.

He knew why he was being twitchy and uncomfortable, shifting around in his chair, unable to settle. It had nothing to do with the heat, or the humidity, or the low pressure system rolling in off the ocean a hundred kilometers distant. It had everything to do with Reuenthal, whom he hadn’t seen in months.

They had written to each other, of course, and even half-discussed the situation with Mittermeyer in their letters, but that was not the same as seeing him in person. He had no idea what Reuenthal would be feeling like.

His phone buzzed and Yang almost dropped it, so quickly did he try to look at his messages.

< I’m back on the ground.

< Meet you here when you get into the city?

< I need to put my things in my hotel.

And he attached an address. 

> of course

> be there in about 45 mins

Yang scrambled to find his shoes and check himself in the mirror, debating if he should change into his uniform, then deciding against it. There was no way he could even remotely pretend that he was going to see Reuenthal on business. 

And then he was out the door and jogging to the train station. His entire journey was one of complete preoccupation, and he almost missed the stop he was supposed to get off at, and barely made it out the doors and onto the platform in time.

The light now was subdued and yellowish, as the heavy clouds moved over the sun. The city felt dragged down under its own weight in the heat and humidity, and everyone who was out on the streets was rushing to get from one air conditioned haven to another, and their body language made it clear that every step was a burden.

The restaurant was a welcome relief from the sweltering air outside, the air conditioning hitting him like a wall as he stepped in. The place was swankier than he was used to, and he suddenly wished he had put on his uniform; he was feeling underdressed in the dark and surprisingly elegant place. Soft music was playing, but it felt loud enough to further jangle Yang’s nerves. 

Reuenthal was already here, and he was watching Yang come in with an inscrutable expression on his face. Yang met his eyes, almost accidentally, as he walked over, and he couldn’t help but smile, most of the anxiety about seeing Reuenthal being replaced with the happiness of  _ seeing _ Reuenthal. 

“Been a while, Commander,” Reuenthal said. “Have you picked up any new bad habits in my absence?” 

Yang pulled out the chair opposite him to sit. “Oh, plenty,” Yang said. “You’d be horrified to learn of them all.”

Reuenthal smiled, then. “You’ll have to tell me all about them.”

Yang shook his head, and Reuenthal raised an eyebrow. Yang shrugged a little. “Von Steger and all of my students judge me for the way I sit at the front of my classroom to deliver my lectures. I think it’s an endless source of gossip and amusement how bad my habits are, but they can’t get rid of me.”

“You notice that I’ve seated us at a table rather than a booth, so you have no ability to contort yourself.” But Reuenthal was smiling, still.

“I’m glad you’re still trying to improve me. Though I’ll tell you, it won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“You’ve never been able to make me do something that’s against my nature, have you?” The particular tilt of Yang’s head, and the lightness he kept in his voice indicated that he was joking-- playing the now-familiar game with language.

“Oh? I haven’t yet managed to corrupt you with my evil ways?” Reuenthal was joking, too, a sardonic tone in the words.

“Not yet,” Yang said.

“Perhaps it’s for want of trying.” Reuenthal fiddled with the water glass in front of him, swirling it around for a second before taking a sip. Yang watched him, and knew Reuenthal was watching him watch him. “Should I try harder?” His voice was carefully neutral, and he looked at Yang steadily. 

Yang’s heart had leapt up into his throat. “And what will everyone think, if you do?” He was really asking about Mittermeyer, and Reuenthal knew this. Yang felt-- or he knew he would feel-- more than a little guilty about anything involving Reuenthal, since he knew more than anything else that Mittermeyer loved him. But Mittermeyer had gone and destroyed what he had, and Yang couldn’t really be faulted for that, or for the light and strange feeling in his chest. 

“I don’t care,” Reuenthal said. Though his voice was steady, there was a momentary twitch of his lips in a scowl that he was unable to stifle. The guilt found its home with that expression-- Yang knew he was further breaking something that he had once tried very hard to protect. “And you shouldn’t either.”

But he knew what Reuenthal wanted, and the guilt, for once, was not enough to stop Yang from knowing what he wanted, as well. Yang waited a second before responding. “Then I suppose you should try a little harder.”

Reuenthal relaxed back into his chair slightly, the corner of his mouth turning up into a smile. He changed the topic. “I’ve been reassigned to Odin,” he said lightly. 

Before Yang could ask anything about it, the waitress came over to take their orders, which was good because it gave Yang a chance to breathe, but bad because he hadn’t even glanced at the menu. He picked something at random, and saw Reuenthal silently laughing at him as he fumbled telling it to the waitress.

“Where are you assigned on Odin?” Yang asked. “And is this a permanent thing?”

“Ministry of War, and probably not for too long. I’ll get bored of it eventually.”

“Oh?”

“Captain Hetling suggested that my experience on his ship might translate well to the navigation unit, and he also thought it was long past time for me to get a reprieve from the front lines.”

The navigation unit, Yang knew, was responsible for mapping routes for patrol ships, as well as what information could be gleaned about navigable spaces on the other side of the galaxy. They worked closely with the strategic planning department to write routes of attack, among other things.

“If I recall correctly, you said you would request a change in posting a while ago because far-patrol was boring. What makes you think that you’ll get bored of this one so quickly?”

“It’s far easier to get bored of desk work than it is to get bored of being on the other side of the galaxy,” Reuenthal said. “And I did change my posting internally on the Teutonic. Going from security officer to executive officer is no small change.”

“Captain is more befitting to you,” Yang said. Reuenthal’s mouth twitched in his small, odd smile.

“Oh? Well, you’re closer to that than I am. You could have a ship of your own now, if you wanted one.”

“Why would I want one?” Yang asked.

“It’s self explanatory, isn’t it?”

“Everyone is telling me to leave the IOA. I only just arrived there.”

“You’ve been teaching for two years. Isn’t that long enough?”

“I don’t think so,” Yang said. “I was finally feeling like I had my feet underneath me, and then…” He shrugged. “Reassigned to a new class.”

“You said you’re taking over Staden’s position? That should be something.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You have a very different approach to the games than Staden does. I have no idea if your students will love or hate you.”

“Some of them will do one, some the other.” Yang shrugged. “If I look at the bright side of it, I think it will be easier to give my students good sense in SW than it was in history, since half of them did not pay attention in that class.”

“The fact that the practicum weighs so heavily on the rankings does give some impetus for students to care.”

Yang sighed. “Still, I like history.”

“Then make them do cavalry battles and age of sail naval battles and trench warfare,” Reuenthal said with a wave of his hand.

“Perhaps I will.” 

“Aside from your teaching troubles, how have you been?”

Yang fiddled with his fork. “Fine,” he said. “There’s always something strange happening, and I feel like I can never talk about any of it with anybody.”

“You can tell me anything you like.”

Yang smiled at him gratefully. “Certain things are better left unsaid.”

“Are they indeed?” Reuenthal looked slightly put out.

“There is talk that is merely unpleasant, and talk that is dangerous,” Yang said. “There are certain scandals for which the best we can hope is that we only ever discuss the unpleasant parts, and not the dangerous ones.”

“Oh?”

“On El Facil, I made a series of embarrassing mistakes. Admitting to that is unpleasant, but it is not  _ dangerous _ .”

“One should hope.”

“In any event,” Yang said, “there seems to be no shortage of unpleasant talk.”

“About Iserlohn?”

“No,” Yang said with a slight frown. “For once in my life, no.”

“You seem unhappy about that?”

He shrugged, a joking tone in his voice. “I’m so used to being an embarrassment that to suddenly find myself on the receiving end of praise and reward makes me uncomfortable.”

“It’s good to have your talent recognized.”

“Is it?”

The waitress arrived with their meals, disrupting the conversation. They ate quietly for a few minutes, Yang feeling like he was sneaking glances at Reuenthal, but Reuenthal was unashamed about looking at him-- but that was the way it had always been, wasn’t it? He couldn’t help but smile.

They talked about nothing for a while, until they had almost finished eating. Reuenthal studied him for a moment. “Maybe I lied, earlier.”

“About what?” Yang asked.

“I said that it’s good for your talent to be recognized. Perhaps that’s not true.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve suddenly decided to agree with me,” Yang said. “It’s easier to be obscure. It lets me be as lazy as I desire.”

“No,” Reuenthal said, finishing the last of his beer. “I say that because I feel I might get jealous, if too many people saw you for who you really are.”

Yang suddenly felt quite warm in the cool air of the restaurant. “Oh,” he said.

Reuenthal flagged the waiter down for the bill and paid before Yang could object.

The rain hadn’t yet begun when they walked out of the restaurant, but the clammy feeling in the air and the fierceness of the wind meant that it was only a matter of time. The sky was heavy and grey above them. Yang’s hair kept blowing directly into his eyes, no matter which way he turned to avoid it.

“Shall we find a bar?” Yang asked.

“I have a bottle of wine in my hotel room,” Reuenthal said. “That might be more pleasant.”

“What kind?”

“The kind that is a rare indulgence on a lieutenant commander’s salary,” Reuenthal said. “It would be a shame for me to drink the whole thing myself.”

“Of course.” Yang gestured for Reuenthal to go ahead, and he walked next to him. By time they made it to the hotel, the first fat drops of rain were beginning to fall, splashing and pockmarking the sidewalk. Yang stood outside the hotel awning for a second and tilted his face upwards, looking at the sky, until a heavy raindrop landed on his nose. Reuenthal held the door open for him.

The lobby was deserted, and in the elevator, Reuenthal leaned against the wall, arms crossed, silently watching Yang. When the bell chimed and the doors opened, neither of them moved for a second, until Yang gestured to say ‘lead the way’, which Reuenthal did, languidly walking down the cold and empty hallway. Their footsteps were imperceptibly quiet on the red carpeted floor.

Reuenthal’s hotel room was nice, Yang thought. It was a little suite with a kitchenette, a room with a couch and table, and a bedroom. It was not fancy or large, but it was clean and comfortable. The middle room where they had entered had a huge plate glass window looking out over the capital city; they were fairly far up, about twenty floors. Rain was streaking down the glass in dark sheets, and Yang looked out at it and shivered a little. For how hot the day had been, it was cold in the room, and the violent throes of the weather outside wasn’t doing any favors.

Reuenthal had taken his uniform jacket off, leaving him in just his white button down, and he came from the kitchenette holding two glasses of wine, handing one to Yang and standing shoulder to shoulder with him as they looked out the window. 

A streak of lightning split the sky, and the power in the building flickered momentarily, an alternating reversal of sudden light in darkness and sudden darkness in light. Yang shivered again as the thunder rumbled. “Glad we’re not still in the elevator right now,” he said, which was a stupid thing to say, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

Reuenthal chuckled a little bit but didn’t address Yang’s floundering comment. He raised his wine glass, the liquid catching the dim light in the room behind them. “What are we drinking to?”

“To bad habits,” Yang said, and raised his glass.

“Prosit!” Reuenthal said, and knocked his glass on Yang’s.

“This is good,” Yang said after he took a sip. “Thank you for deigning to share.”

“No matter how good the wine is, it’s depressing to drink alone, so I’m happy to do so.”

“True.” Yang enjoyed the feeling of Reuenthal standing quietly at his shoulder. When he finished his first glass of wine, Reuenthal picked up the bottle from the coffee table behind them and refilled it.

“To never doing anything against our nature,” Reuenthal said, raising his second glass.

“Prosit!” Yang said. He leaned against the cold glass window and faced Reuenthal, taking a couple sips of wine. The lighting flashing behind him, reflected in Reuenthal’s mismatched eyes. Reuenthal smiled at him.

“To Oskar von Reuenthal,” Yang said.

“To Yang Wen-li,” Reuenthal replied. 

This time, Yang wasn’t surprised at all when Reuenthal leaned towards him, his hand that wasn’t holding a wine glass reaching up towards Yang’s face. Yang tilted his head, and Reuenthal kissed him.

Reuenthal’s lips were soft and slightly parted, and his hand stroked from Yang’s cheek to the back of his head, to tangle in his hair. Yang ran his own hand down Reuenthal’s back, pulling him a little closer. Reuenthal chuckled a little, and his breath smelled like wine. He broke off the kiss for just a second and took the dangerously tilted glass out of Yang’s hand, putting both of their glasses on the side table next to them. Yang appreciated his looking out for the safety of both their clothing and the carpet. 

Only then was he able to put his other hand on Yang’s shoulder and press him back against the cold window. 

Yang thought his knees might give out, but he somehow remained standing as Reuenthal kissed him. He traced his hand up Reuenthal’s side, then down again while Reuenthal cupped the back of his neck. Yang’s eyes were closed, so when the thunder boomed behind him, he jumped. Reuenthal took the opportunity to press his other hand to the small of Yang’s back and move to kiss Yang’s jaw towards his ear. The sensation of it all was almost overwhelming-- Reuenthal’s body pressed against him, coiled and taut, his hands on him, the muted roar of the rain and the sound of both of them breathing, the taste of wine still heady in his mouth.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” Reuenthal whispered directly into Yang’s ear.

“Yeah,” Yang mumbled, somewhat incoherent as his hand raked through the back of Reuenthal’s hair. “So have I.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP to Yang's mental health-- I think dealing with the SW program is far more annoying than teaching history. He just has to tell himself "It's just GMing, your favorite part of the game, all of the time :))) " lol
> 
> In which Mittermeyer is like "today I will completely destroy my life and be miserable about it the whole time"
> 
> the return of Oberstein (for real). Yang continues to be bad at interacting with nature. oberstein now sees that yang is like, brilliant, and so is compelled to start pushing him in the directions he wants. 
> 
> Yang's description here is stolen directly from [ a mountain goats song. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=987MTbOl0mc) I was tempted to name the chapter 'give thanks to the broken bones' but we should save that for later lmao. i have a list of phrases (aka mountain goats song lyrics) that I am saving for the perfect time to use as a chapter title.
> 
> Mittermeyer says Oberstein has absolutely rancid vibes. Yang says don't be prejudiced. some people just have terrible vibes and there's nothing you can do about that.
> 
> Everyone in this story is absolutely making some choices. But getting to write Yang and Reuenthal consciously and intentionally flirting with each other was very fun. finally. should tag this one slow burn I guess lmao. there's things that I could say about their conversation but won't haha
> 
> sorry for the fade to black if you were hoping for something more lol. i don't feel confident enough to write a sex scene so I shall not attempt. you're more than welcome to if you like though :p or simply leave it as an exercise for the reader
> 
> speaking of chapter titles: [ today's chapter title ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j407FVKItPA) . which i have been saving for this moment since forever. a song about definitely having sex with somebody, but told in fragments of fallible memory, as if trying to reconstruct a text from nothing but scraps
> 
> _There was rain  
>  There was wind  
> There was spring coming in  
> There was a feeling approaching doom  
> And I was happy to see you  
> And it was cold in your room  
> And you were warm and that's all I remember  
> And your arms were warm and that's all I remember_
> 
> thank you to lydia and em for the beta read! you know the drill bit.ly/shadowofheaven , bit.ly/arcadispark for my other writing. @javert on tumblr, @natsinator on twitter


	14. You and Me and Commander Leigh Makes Three

_ May 483 IC, Odin _

Kircheis and Hilde had both finished their Military History final, and, as was their custom, walked off campus together in the overly-warm late spring afternoon.

“I don’t really understand why you took the exam,” Kircheis said to her. “You know Commander Leigh knows you know the material. He wouldn’t care.”

“It wouldn’t be fair of me to get to skip it,” she said, grinning up at him. “Besides, I figured it would probably be the last chance I got to see you before you headed home for the summer.”

Kircheis smiled. “I’m flattered.”

“Where do you live, by the way? I don’t think I ever asked.”

“Fifty-third district,” Kircheis said. “Not too far.”

“Oh!” Hilde said. “I should come visit you, then.”

This brought Kircheis up short, and he wasn’t sure how to respond. “I don’t know if your father--”

“He likes you,” Hilde said. “Just like I said he would.”

“That’s different from letting you travel to see me,” Kircheis said. He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Besides, I don’t even know what my parents would think of you.”

“Haven’t you told them about me?”

Kircheis frowned slightly. “No, I don’t really tell them very much.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not because of you,” Kircheis hurriedly corrected. “I just don’t… have much to say to them.”

There must have been something in his tone that alarmed her, because she looked up at him. “Do you need a place to stay for the summer?”

“It’s not like that,” Kircheis said. He seemed to be getting himself into a muddle with this conversation. “My parents are very kind people. They just don’t understand me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He smiled. “It’s nothing that you have to apologize for, Fraulein Hilde.”

“What don’t they understand about you?”

Kircheis shook his head. “It’s not really something that I can explain.”

“Try me.”

“They just don’t like my friends,” he said after a second of hesitation. “The company I keep.”

“I want to meet your home friends,” Hilde said. They arrived at the train station, taking the now familiar path up to the platform, where they then leaned against the chain link fence, their fingers hooked in the wire, looking down towards where the train would appear from around the corner in the distance. Hilde rattled the wire. “Martin, right?”

“Yeah,” Kircheis said. He was a little surprised that she remembered. He had only mentioned him offhand once or twice.

“Think he’d like me?”

“He might be jealous of you getting to spend time with me,” Kircheis said. “But other than that, yes, he would.”

“Oh, that’s good.” She bounced on the fence for a second. “Would I like him?”

“He’s just like you and me and Commander Leigh,” Kircheis said after a second. “You probably would like him.”

“Then I definitely want to meet him.”

Kircheis wasn’t sure if he wanted the two spheres of his life to overlap, so he shrugged. “Maybe I could take a trip back to the capital during the summer, at some point.”

“I would like that,” Hilde said. “If you brought Martin with you, we could play an SW game. Get some practice in before school starts again.”

“Martin would hate that.”

“Really? I thought you said he was like us.”

“He hates the war,” Kircheis said. He looked off into the distance, where they could hear the train begin to rattle its way closer. “He doesn’t like that I go to the IOA.”

“Why do you go to the IOA?” Hilde asked. “You’re not like the other students. You’re not even like Oskar.”

Kircheis shrugged. “Things just worked out that way,” he said. It wasn’t a lie, because it wasn’t really saying anything.

Hilde narrowed her eyes at him. “It takes work to go there. It doesn’t just happen by accident.”

“Here comes the train,” Kircheis said. He took his hands off the fence and stood up straight. “If I don’t see you until next school year…” He held out his hand for Hilde to shake. She considered it for a second, then hugged him instead, squeezing him tightly. He was momentarily flustered, then hugged her back. 

“Call me,” she said. “And either do come visit the capital, or let me come see you. It’s a long two months to be away.”

“I will,” Kircheis said. “One or the other. I promise.”

“Good,” Hilde said firmly. She gave him a funny little salute as the train pulled up. “Until then, Cadet Kircheis.”

“Until then, Fraulein Mariendorf,” he said with a smile. She hopped onto the train, her backpack flopping around on her back, and disappeared for a moment before reappearing at a window, from which she waved at him until the train pulled away.

Kircheis had to admit he was sad to see her go. 

* * *

Saying his goodbyes to Commander Leigh was also something that Kircheis wanted to do, so, a few days later, he knocked on Leigh’s office door.

“Come in,” Leigh said.

Kircheis pushed the door open and saluted. Leigh just waved at him to sit. “What can I do for you, Kircheis?” Leigh looked exhausted, and the papers on his desk were piled high and chaotically disorganized.

“I mostly just came to say goodbye for the summer, though if anyone else asks, I’m returning your book,” Kircheis said, pulling from his bag the latest in a string of texts that Leigh had lent him.

“Well, thank you for not  _ stealing  _ it for the summer, Kircheis,” Leigh said. He stuck his pen between his teeth and took the book, looking at it blankly. “I don’t even remember giving this to you, to be honest.”

“Are you alright, sir?” he asked.

“Hunh? Oh, yeah.” Leigh shook his head, his floppy hair falling in his eyes. He brushed it off his face, then smiled at Kircheis. “A good friend of mine has been staying at my house the past couple days, going through a very weird personal crisis, and it’s finals grading season, so I have not been getting as much sleep as I would like.”

“I think there’s a tank bed on campus you can use somewhere,” Kircheis said.

Leigh made a face, which made Kircheis smile-- it was a very endearing expression, for all that Leigh apparently didn’t like tank beds. “Thanks, but no thanks.” He leaned forward on his desk, propped up on his elbows, and he gestured a little bit. “The nice thing about sleep, Kircheis, is that typically when you wake up, all your problems seem much easier to solve. Tank beds do not give you the pleasure of that illusion.”

“Is it really that bad, sir?”

“Probably not, but I’m sure I would feel better if I could get enough sleep to solve it.” He shook his head and smiled. “Well, it’s not your problem. Congratulations on finishing your freshman year as first. It’s not an easy thing to do.”

“Thank you, sir.” Kircheis’s face heated up a little and he shifted in his chair uncomfortably. 

“Do you have any plans for the summer? Looking forward to going home?”

“Not in particular, sir.”

Yang raised an eyebrow. “Which one of those things are you answering there?”

“Either, sir.”

“You aren’t excited to see your friend, uh, Martin?”

“I am,” Kircheis said.

“Family trouble, then?”

“I guess.”

“Want to talk about it?” Leigh seemed sympathetic, which made Kircheis want to confess absolutely everything to him, but that would neither have been wise nor fair.

“I wouldn’t want to trouble you,” Kircheis said. “You seem to have enough going on already, and it’s not--”

“You know, as a teacher, it’s my job to look out for my students.”

“You won’t really be my teacher any more after this semester,” Kircheis said.

“I won’t?” 

“I didn’t have room in my schedule to sign up for Ancient Earth,” Kircheis admitted. “I wanted to, though.”

“But did you sign up for your sophomore year SW practicum?”

“I-- of course, it’s mandatory.” He looked at Leigh, confused.

“Since I’ve always been the black sheep of the history department,” he said sarcastically, “they’re getting rid of me. Exiling me to the dark shores of the strategy department.”

“You’re teaching the top level SW course next year?” Kircheis couldn’t keep the pleased tone out of his voice.

“I’m glad that at least one person is happy about this, even if it isn’t me.” His voice and manner were petulant, but he still smiled at Kircheis. “I’m sure all your classmates will hate me.”

“Have you told Fraulein Mariendorf?”

“I told her that I’m teaching a new course next year, so she doesn’t have to repeat Military History, but I didn’t tell her what it is. Maybe I should have it be a surprise.”

“I think she would like that.” 

“Good, then please do keep it a secret from her.”

“I will, sir.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Leigh said.

“What question, sir?”

“The one you tried to dodge with this little digression. Is there something that you want to talk about? I’m a good listener, even if I might not directly be able to help.”

Kircheis looked away. “Only the most patient of adults can bear to listen to a teenager whine about how much their family does not understand them.”

He earned a laugh from Leigh from that. “It’s not like we all weren’t teenagers once. My father, for his part, did not understand me in the least.”

“Really, sir?”

“He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘Hank, there are only two things in this world worth spending your life in: art and business. Art feeds the soul, and making good money with business will let you feed your body.’ He could not for the life of him understand why I wanted to study history.”

“So you came to the IOA instead?”

Leigh sighed. “No, it’s a long and stupid story about how I ended up at the IOA. It wasn’t exactly by choice. Maybe when you graduate I’ll tell it to you.”

“Is your father happy with you now?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Leigh said. “He died approximately five minutes after having that conversation with me.”

“I’m sorry,” Kircheis said.

“It’s fine.” Leigh smiled. “I sometimes think I should have told him I would study art history. But it wouldn’t have made much difference, in the end.” He shrugged a little. “I’m sorry that you’re dealing with something like that now.”

“It’s alright. I should be grateful that they’re trying to do right by me.”

Leigh leaned even further forward, sending a few papers drifting to the floor. Kircheis picked them up and put them back on his desk. “That’s all well and good,” Leigh said, “but remember, Kircheis, they’re not responsible for your life. Only you are. Just because someone says they have your best interests at heart, and even if they honestly believe it, that doesn’t mean that they should make your choices for you.”

“Yes, sir,” Kircheis said. “Thank you for the advice.”

Yang flopped back in his chair. “Wish I could tell Mittermeyer that and have him believe me. I’m just forcing my advice on you because I can’t give it to him anymore.”

“That’s alright, sir.” Kircheis glanced behind him at the picture on Leigh’s office wall. “You give good advice.”

Leigh laughed. “Well, thank you, Kircheis. Do you think you’ll be able to enjoy your summer regardless?”

“I’m sure I will,” he said.

“Good, good. Make sure you get plenty of rest, so you come back prepared to lead the pack next year. Read so you don’t let yourself get rusty.”

“I will, sir.”

“And let your friend Martin quote the classics at you, too,” Leigh smiled a little. “After all, my father was right that art feeds the soul.”

Kircheis felt very odd when Leigh said that, so he just nodded, and then stood, feeling like he was being dismissed. “I hope you enjoy your summer as well, sir.”

Leigh also stood, and held out his hand for Kircheis to shake, which he did. “I expect that I will do my best to enjoy myself, despite the universe conspiring to not let me be as lazy as I would like. I’ll see you in August, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

Kircheis walked home from the train station alone. He had told his mother it wasn’t worth the effort to drive to come pick him up; he didn’t have more belongings to pack to take home than fit in a suitcase, and he had wanted the solitude of the ride to prepare himself for seeing his family again. By the time that the train pulled away from the station in town, the same one that he had sat with Reinhard at so many times, the sun had slid behind the trees, and all the streets were just now illuminating their streetlights. The night air was warm and still, and the songs of insects and frogs in the woods were more soothing than they were annoying. Kircheis walked very slowly, and, when he got to his street, lingered in front of the empty von Müsel house for a second before turning to walk up the path to his family’s home.

The greenhouse lights were on, which meant his father was working in there, and it looked like his mother was in the kitchen, from her silhouette moving around behind the curtain. He hesitated at the front door, feeling unsure if he should knock. He decided just to open it.

The sound of it alerted his mother, who called out, “Sieg, is that you?”

“Yes, I’m home, mom.”

She emerged from the kitchen as Kircheis was taking off his shoes at the door. He was struck by how small she looked. “Sieg,” she said, and smiled. “Welcome home. Dinner’s keeping warm in the oven.”

He wasn’t sure exactly what to say, so he just tried to smile at her in his usual quiet way. She came up to him, and he bent down to kiss her cheek. She patted his back. For all the trappings of affection, Kircheis felt it to be a stiff reunion.

“Go put your suitcase in your room. I put fresh sheets on your bed for you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he said, then did as instructed and disappeared upstairs. 

His bedroom was simultaneously larger and smaller than he remembered it. Of course, having the attic bedroom meant he had far more space than his closet of a freshman dorm at the IOA provided, but it still felt like it had shrunk, or perhaps the outside world had gotten larger. He sat down on the bed, running a hand over the quilt his mother had folded at the end of it, the one his grandmother had made for him a few years before she died, and he opened his suitcase. On the very top was the picture of Reinhard and Annerose and himself, smiling and frozen in time. He returned the photograph to its usual place of honor on his desk, and immediately the room felt more like his again.

He remained there for a few minutes, until his mother called him down to eat dinner. His father was seated at the table already. “Welcome home, Sieg,” he said. “How have you been?”

“Fine, thanks,” Kircheis said. “The year finished well.”

His mother returned to the table bearing the meal, and she served everyone. “You have good grades, I presume?”

“I suppose,” he said.

“Is this an ‘I’m first and don’t want to brag’ kind of ‘I suppose’?” she asked with a knowing smile.

Kircheis smiled and shrugged, taking a sip of his milk. 

“Congratulations,” his father said. “I never thought that I’d see you become an officer, but if your schoolwork is any indication, it seems like you’re suited for it.” His voice was the mild kind of pleased, deliberately pitched that way to avoid anything unsavory underneath.

“Thank you.” There was the general quiet clinking of cutlery as they all ate. “Dinner is good, mom.”

“I made your favorites. And a black forest cake for dessert.”

“You didn’t have to,” Kircheis protested.

“It’s so rare that we get to see you, I would be derelict in my duty as a mother if I didn’t try to spoil you a little while you’re here.”

“Do you have any summer assignments that you need to do?” his father asked.

“One of my professors gave me a list of things to read, but that isn’t an assignment, just a suggestion,” Kircheis said. “I’ll have to see if I can find them all in the library.”

“Which professor is this?”

“Commander von Leigh,” Kircheis said, unable to keep the warm tone out of his voice while discussing his favorite teacher.

“What does he teach?”

“I had him for military history this past year, but he’s being transferred to teach the strategic warfare upper level practicum,” Kircheis said. “It’s a war games class.”

“How interesting,” his mother said. “Is it computer simulations?”

“No, we play against each other, while another student moderates to make sure that legal moves are being made.” He checked to make sure his parents were actually interested in what he was saying, saw that they were, and then continued. “So, say you had two fleets both trying to capture a planet…” He picked up his napkin and laid it on the table to represent the planet, and then took the salt and pepper shakers to represent opposing fleets. “Each player would send a message to the game moderator what order they wanted their fleet to execute-- say, Fleet A wants to move into the planet’s orbit at a certain speed-- and make sure they timestamp it with when they want their order to be executed. They don’t know what the other player is doing, so the other player could say, ‘I want to move towards the enemy fleet and fire on them.’ The GM would advance the clock, and would execute both orders, so--” Kircheis moved the shakers-- “Fleet A would be moving, but Fleet B would be heading towards them. The clock advances in increments, and every time it does, the GMs send both players new information about what they could see. So the A player would learn that they’re being chased, and they might decide to either speed up or turn and return fire. It can get pretty complicated.” 

“Fascinating,” his father said. “I certainly never did any of that during my compulsory service.”

“Yeah.” Kircheis looked down at his plate. 

“So, you like this Commander von Leigh?” his mother asked. “Odd name, isn’t it?”

“His family is Phezzani,” Kircheis said, which he thought was probably a true statement. “But yes, I like him. He’s a good teacher.”

“Has he done anything of note?”

Kircheis was a little uncomfortable with the question. “I suppose.”

His mother raised her eyebrows. “This is another one of his ‘I suppose’ deflections,” she said to his father, even though Kircheis was right there. “I’ll search Commander Leigh’s name and learn that he’s been responsible for some great miracle on the battlefield.”

“If he were famous, he’d be more than just a commander,” his father pointed out, trying to soothe his mother. “That’s not exactly a flag officer. For a teacher at the end of their career, it’s not a particularly high rank.”

Kircheis was momentarily confused. “Commander Leigh isn’t-- he’s very young. He only graduated from the IOA in 479.”

This elicited very different reactions from his parents. His father was startled, and his mother was suddenly anxious, narrowing her eyes. “That is young, but I suppose to be a commander at that age shows good promise in his career,” his father said. 

“And why has young Commander Leigh taken an interest in you?” his mother asked.

“I don’t know,” Kircheis said. “He’s just nice.”

“Have you made any friends at school?” his father asked. “You didn’t mention anyone when you were home for the winter solstice.”

“Just one,” he said.

“Oh?” his father asked. “What’s his name?”

“Er, my friend is a girl,” he said.

“What’s  _ her _ name then?” his mother asked, suddenly very interested.

“Hildegarde von Mariendorf.”

“How did you meet her?”

“She’s-- her father is friends with Commander Leigh, so he lets her come to his class. It’s a sort of unofficial thing, but Chancellor Steger ignores it.”

His parents glanced at each other. “So, she’s smart?” his father asked.

“Smarter than I am.”

“I highly doubt that,” his mother said dismissively. 

“We’ve played that kind of strategic warfare game against each other, and she’s beaten me a couple times.”

“Odd hobby for a girl,” his mother said. “Where does she go to school?”

“One of the girls’ schools in the capital.”

“You mentioned that her father was friends with your teacher-- what’s her family like?”

“Her father is nice. I’ve been to their house a few times. She’s the only child, and her mother died a couple years ago.”

“It’s serious, then?” his father asked. “Since you’ve met her father.”

Kircheis was startled. “I’m not-- Fraulein Mariendorf isn’t-- We’re just friends.”

His parents both looked at him with differing unpleasant expressions. His father was merely surprised, but his mother seemed actively upset.

Kircheis felt the need to explain himself, “She’s too young for me, and her father is a count, so it wouldn’t be appropriate, and, anyway, I don’t think she likes me like that.”

“How old is she?” his father asked.

“Fourteen.”

His father’s expression was one of appraisal. “Well, it’s good for you to have a friend, regardless.”

“Yeah…” Kircheis looked back down at his plate.

“Your fencing coach was asking me the other day when I ran into him in the grocery if you had been keeping up with the sport,” his mother said after a long second of awkward silence. “Have you been?”

“Oh, yes.” Kircheis was relieved for the change of topic. “I take several physical classes in the evening. Fencing, ground combat, and hand to hand.”

The conversation moved on to slightly easier things from there, and after dinner, Kircheis was able to retreat to his room. He found messages waiting for him on his phone from Martin.

< did you make it home?

> yeah, I did

> just finished eating dinner

> how have you been

< missed you, mostly

< can i see you?

> now?

< :)

> let me wait until my parents go to bed

> then i can probably meet you somewhere

They agreed to meet at one of their usual haunts, a wooded area in the nearby park that absolutely no one would be at during the night. Kircheis waited around until he heard his parents finish their nighttime routines, busying himself with unpacking his belongings back into his dresser. When the house was quiet, Kircheis crept down the stairs, remembering which ones creaked and needed to be stepped over, and then exited the house.

He jogged to the park, relishing the nighttime quiet and the muggy air against his face. Martin was waiting for him on a park bench, visible at a distance by the light of a nearby streetlamp. When he saw Kircheis coming down the road, he stood up and walked down the path a little, disappearing into the trees. Kircheis followed a little behind.

The whole park had been deserted, but Kircheis couldn’t fault Martin for wanting a little extra privacy before they spoke. He could see him a bit ahead, using his phone flashlight to illuminate the path. Kircheis’s eyes were sensitive enough, and he was used to walking in the dark woods enough, that he didn’t need more light than what the moon provided. They came to an area of the woods that was mostly pines, growing far enough apart and with their tufts of branches high enough up that it served as a kind of clearing. There were rocks scattered throughout the clearing, of different sizes, some half buried in the dirt, some several meters tall. Martin sat down against the largest one, sliding his back down the surface and his feet out in front of him, leaving scraped trails in the dry pine needles underfoot, revealing the dark, damp dirt beneath. Kircheis sat next to him.

“How was your train ride?” Martin asked, breaking the silence.

“Good,” Kircheis said. “I’m glad to see you again.”

“Yeah.” Martin scooted a little closer to Kircheis and put his head on his shoulder. Kircheis rested his cheek on Martin’s hair. He picked up and fiddled with some of the dry pine needles on the ground next to him. “You survived a year in that place.”

“I did.”

Martin moved his head a little so that he could look up at Kircheis, rather a puppy-dog sort of expression. Kircheis thought it was endearing and smiled down at him. “You know, you never told me if you actually liked it there or not.”

“It’s like any place,” Kircheis said. “There are things that I like and things that I hate.”

“You don’t tell me about it.”

“I thought you didn’t want to hear.” Kircheis tugged on some of Martin’s long hair gently. “You hate the fact that I go there. I thought I was sparing your feelings by not talking about it.”

“I’d rather know.”

“Why?”

“Do you not want to tell me?”

“No, I will tell you,” Kircheis said. “I’m just trying to figure out what you want to hear.”

It had been a long time since he had had Martin next to him like this. When he had come to the city on his quick visits, they couldn’t exactly go somewhere private together, so the intimacy of their interactions had been necessarily limited. And when he had come home for the winter solstice break, the weather had been too poor to meet outside, and Kircheis’s mother had watched him like a hawk. He had barely been able to sneak himself to Martin’s house once or twice, when his parents were out. Having Martin next to him now, curled up against his side, made him acutely aware of how unpleasant every other time was.

Martin took Kircheis’s hand and placed it on his lap, playing with his fingers with both hands. “I just want to hear about you. Are you the same person when you’re at school?”

“Should I be?”

“I don’t know,” Martin said. 

Kircheis was silent for a long second before speaking. “I don’t feel real, most of the time when I’m there,” he said. “Not like I feel when I’m here with you.” He found it hard to think about himself at school, unable to call to mind what he was thinking while in class or laying in his dorm at night, like the thought process was so alien to what he was feeling now that he couldn’t quite recreate it. He felt like he moved through the school year in almost a dream, not really rising to the surface except for certain moments: when he was playing an SW game, when he was walking Hilde back to the train station, when he was talking to Commander Leigh.

Martin waited for him to elaborate.

“There’s only a few people there who I feel like are worth talking to, who I think understand things. But I can’t tell them about myself, even if I wanted to.”

“Mmm,” Martin said. “Who are these people?”

So Kircheis spent a while explaining meeting Hilde and Commander Leigh, and how he had read the description of what had happened at El Facil, and how he had known immediately that Leigh had orchestrated it so the civilians could escape. Martin seemed duly impressed.

“So, you think you can follow in his footsteps?” Martin asked.

“He thinks that he can do good in the Empire,” Kircheis said. “As part of the fleet, even. I hope that’s true. It seems better than running away-- otherwise he would have left. He’s from Phezzan, I think.”

Martin nodded, his hair tickling Kircheis’s chin, his head still resting somewhere between Kircheis’s shoulder and chest. “You like him?”

“Yeah. I wish you could meet him. You might get along.”

Martin leaned further sideways, ending up with his head in Kircheis’s lap. Kircheis stroked his hair off his forehead and stared up into the night sky, plenty of stars visible through the cracks in the pine tree covering overhead.

“Why do you say that?”

“He told me to let you quote the classics at me. Told me it would be good for my soul.”

Martin laughed a little at that. “Should I be flattered or worried that you were talking to him about me?”

“Flattered.” Kircheis shook his head. “I wish I could tell him more. I would like to brag about you.”

Martin reached up and took Kircheis’s hand off his forehead, holding it and then bringing it to his mouth to kiss. “I should be the one bragging about you.”

“I wish I had known that it would be like this,” Kircheis said. “Then I would have tried to convince you to take the test, so that you could come with me.”

“I don’t think you would have been able to.”

“I know. But I would have tried.”

Martin kissed his fingers again. “Should I make you take your teacher’s advice?”

“Which one?” Kircheis asked. He traced Martin’s lips with his finger.

“Shall I quote some literature for you?”

“Please,” Kircheis said. He leaned back against the cool rock and closed his eyes. “I want to hear it.”

“Hmm,” Martin said. He rubbed Kircheis’s hand with his thumb. “Some say an army of horsemen, some say soldiers, some say a fleet of ships are the most beautiful things in this dark world, but I say it’s what you love…” Martin’s voice was so soft and quiet that Kircheis couldn’t help but shiver a little as he continued to recite the poem.

When it was done, they sat in silence for a second. “Thank you,” Kircheis said. He paused for a moment, then said, “You are more beautiful than all the ships in the imperial fleet, you know.”

Martin sat up. “Not a very high bar to clear,” he said, but he was smiling in the very faint moonlight. Kircheis tugged on the side of Martin’s shirt, pulling him forward so that the smaller boy could straddle his lap.

“Well, there’s something to be said for watching a fleet of ships slide in front of the stars,” Kircheis said. He tucked a bit of Martin’s hair behind his ear. “You have to find beauty in it, because you’re not allowed to have anything like this.”

“I wish you didn’t have to go there.”

“It’s alright. I just have to try to find the good I can do there.”

“Is there any?”

“I hope so,” Kircheis said, thinking of Leigh.

“Yeah.” Martin put his hand on Kircheis’s chest. “I’m glad you haven’t changed so much.”

“I won’t,” Kircheis said. “I don’t think that it will change me.”

“Good.” Martin leaned forward and kissed the side of Kircheis’s mouth. Kircheis smiled and turned Martin’s head with his hand so that he could reciprocate.

* * *

_ July 483 IC, Odin _

The summer had grown sticky and ill feeling, and Kircheis had needed to escape the stifling pressure of his house, so he had begged a Tuesday off of work from his boss at the tavern where he bussed tables and asked if Martin wanted to take a trip into the capital with him. He told his parents that he was going to see Hilde Mariendorf, which was true, but not that he was bringing Martin with him. It was the same kind of lie that he had used years ago, whenever he had wanted to go camping with Reinhard-- he would say that he wanted to go camping with the von Müsels, and simply imply that more than just Reinhard was going. He was fairly sure that Annerose would have supported him in this lie, if his parents had ever bothered to ask, but they never did.

It was a constant point of confusion for Kircheis why his parents had liked Reinhard so much more than they liked Martin. After all, the two boys were the same in many respects: intelligent, passionate about the things they believed in, prone to fits of both anger and tenderness, and homosexual. It was true that where Reinhard was athletic, Martin was bookish, and their looks didn’t really compare at all, but Kircheis didn’t think that should matter so much. Maybe, he thought, if Reinhard had stayed on Odin, his mother would have come to dislike him as much as she now disliked Martin, but Kircheis couldn’t possibly know. 

Kircheis thought about this on the train ride into the capital, which was several hours. He stared out the window while Martin read a book beside him, occasionally shaking his shoulder to show him an interesting line.

In the city, the bright summer light seemed to reflect off of every surface: the pavement, the buildings, the cars parked haphazardly on the sides of the street. The place was an oven, without even the relief of a breeze. They were planning to meet Hilde at a cafe, and, by the time they walked there, both Kircheis and Martin were sweating heavily, though Martin was the worse off. 

“After this,” Martin said in between breaths, looking down at the map on his phone, “there’s somewhere I’d like to go.”

“Of course,” Kircheis said. “Where?”

“Thursday is the fiftieth anniversary of the Triangle Street Riot,” Martin said. “I’d like to see the area.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize,” Kircheis said. “Yeah, of course we can go.” He looked at Martin as they walked. “Why do you want to see it?”

“Just-- you know-- pay my respects.” Martin was looking steadfastly down the street, squinting in the glare off the window displays they were passing.

They arrived at the cafe where they were supposed to meet Hilde, a blessedly cool place, and Kircheis spotted her immediately, seated on a high stool at a tall table in the corner, a book open in front of her, her omnipresent backpack dangling off the chair, wearing a smart looking blue blouse and black pants, legs swinging to kick the table.

“Fraulein Hilde,” Kircheis said, coming up to her and getting her attention.

Her head jerked up immediately, and she practically leapt off her stool to hug him. “Siegfried!” she said. “I’m glad you came.”

Kircheis shrugged and smiled at Martin until she released him. “It’s good to see you, too,” he said. “Let me introduce you-- Martin, this is my friend Hildegarde von Mariendorf, Fraulein Hilde, this is Martin Bufholtz.”

Hilde enthusiastically shook Martin’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Herr Bufholtz.”

“Pleasure’s mine, I’m sure. Sieg has told me all about you.” They all sat down.

She smiled. “Really? He said he thought you might be jealous of him spending time with me. I hope that’s not the case.”

Kircheis cringed a little, but Martin was taking it in stride. “Should I be? Are you attempting to steal him from me?” His tone was a joking one-- Martin seemed at ease around Hilde immediately, which Kircheis had not expected, but was pleased by. Martin wasn’t open with many people at school, and when he was, it was usually the argumentative sort of openness, and not the friendly kind.

She laughed. “Of course not. I think there’s plenty of Siegfried’s friendship to go around.”

“How has your summer been?” Kircheis asked.

“Good, mostly,” Hilde said.

“Mostly?”

“Hank is busy all the time, so I don’t get to see him.”

“Hank?” Martin asked.

“Commander Leigh,” Kircheis supplied. “What’s he busy with?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He won’t tell me. I don’t think it’s anything  _ important _ though, or he would.”

“Would he?”

Hilde crossed her arms and frowned. “He should.”

“He’s probably just getting ready for the next school year.”

She sighed a little. “I guess. How have you been?”

“Good,” Kircheis said. “It’s been nice to get away from the IOA.”

“Your family treating you okay?”

“Yeah, they’re fine,” Kircheis said. He looked out the bright cafe windows.

Martin looked at Hilde appraisingly. “Have you met Sieg’s family? When they came to the IOA?”

“No,” Hilde said. “I’m not sure what they would think of me.”

“They might not like you,” Martin said.

At the same moment, Kircheis said, “They would probably like you fine.”

Kircheis and Martin glanced at each other, each surprised by the other’s judgment. “Well, they don’t like  _ me _ ,” Martin stressed.

“And what does that have to do with me?” Hilde asked, leaning forward a little.

“Well, er, you know,” Martin said. He waved his hand vaguely at Hilde. “Right?”

“What?” Kircheis asked.

“I feel like I should be offended,” Hilde said.

“Nevermind,” Martin said. “You said she was like us. I just was making assumptions. Since your parents don’t like me.”

Hilde looked at Kircheis. “How many other people have you told about our shared interests?”

“No one,” Kircheis said. “But you can trust Martin.”

“Good.”

“But my parents don’t dislike you because of that,” Kircheis said, still somewhat confused. “Or, at least, not before last year, they didn’t.”

Martin rolled his eyes, looking at Hilde with an amused expression. “Yeah, they dislike me for the other thing.”

“I feel like I’m missing some context here,” Hilde said. “What happened last year?”

“Er, nothing,” Kircheis said.

“You are not very good at lying.”

“Sometimes it’s better to just say nothing,” Kircheis said. “It really was nothing. I got in trouble and my punishment was to attend the IOA. I told you it was a stupid story.”

“It was my fault,” Martin said.

“So, your parents dislike Martin because he got you in trouble?”

“I couldn’t explain why my parents like or dislike people. They didn’t like him before then, either.”

Martin had a grim smile on his face. He shrugged. To Hilde, he said, “Sieg finds endearing about me the same qualities that his parents hate. I’m sure it would be the same for you.”

“What do you mean?” Hilde asked.

“You know,” Martin said. “Haven’t you ever walked into a room and seen or heard someone, and thought, ‘That person is just like me,’ for some reason-- maybe you couldn’t even explain it? It is in the other that one recognizes the self. Anyway, those same things that you and I might see-- other people hate them.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Hilde said. “I guess.” She was pensive, suddenly.

Kircheis was struck by the way that Martin phrased this, and thought back to that first moment he had seen Commander Leigh, walking in to the convocation dinner late. They had  _ seen _ each other. He thought back to the time he had met Reinhard, peering over the fence at the domineering and impetuous boy, and had been immediately convinced to be friends with him. He thought of Martin. And he looked at Hilde now, in that new light, trying to see what Martin seemed to immediately see about her, why he was so friendly, when Kircheis had been worried he would be jealous or misunderstand their relationship. 

“We find each other, don’t we?” Martin asked. And he looked over at Kircheis with a smile.

“Yeah,” Kircheis said. “I guess we do.”

“Aside from your parents, how has your summer been?” Hilde asked. “Reading anything good?”

“Just working through the list that Commander Leigh gave me. I keep pretty busy,” Kircheis said. “I have work a lot, so…”

“Where do you work?”

“White Stag Tavern, just bussing tables,” Kircheis said. “Doesn’t pay great, but it’s something to do.”

“You should have stayed with me over the summer,” Hilde said. “If you wanted to work, my dad could have found you an assistantship in Neue Sansoucci, or something.”

Martin made a face. 

“It’s fine,” Kircheis said. “I don’t mind being at home.”

“What?” Hilde asked at Martin’s expression.

“We clearly live in different worlds, Fraulein Mariendorf.” Some of the warmth that had been in Martin’s tone vanished.

Hilde frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The rampant nepotism in government positions is part of the problem here, isn’t it?”

“Martin…” Kircheis said. “She’s just trying to be nice.”

“It’s not nepotism for the top student at the IOA to get a summer job,” Hilde said, frowning. “He would be well suited for any post.”

“It’s not the idea that Sieg is well suited that’s the issue, it’s that there are so many other people who are also smart and talented who don’t happen to know the daughter of a count.”

“There’s no one who’s smarter than Siegfried.”

“I don’t disagree, but it’s the principle,” Martin said.

Kircheis was very uncomfortable. “It’s a problem with society that we can’t really solve by arguing about it here,” he said.

Martin plowed on. “Besides, why would Sieg want to go to court?”

“Because--” Hilde began.

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” Kircheis said. “My parents would have been unhappy if I didn’t come home, and I can’t impose on your father regardless.”

“Alright, I’ll stop antagonizing you,” Martin said, and some of the friendliness returned to his demeanor. “It’s not often that I get to speak so freely, especially not with a daughter of a count. I’m abusing Sieg’s friendship with you.”

Hilde relaxed a little bit, but she was now more considering of Martin. “You can tell me what else you think is wrong, you know.”

“Now, that is not a conversation that one should have in public,” Martin said. “Maybe some other time.”

Hilde laughed. “I suppose so.”

“We’re going to see Triangle Street after this,” Martin said. “Would you like to come?”

“Sure,” Hilde said. 

“Your father won’t mind?” Kircheis asked.

“I told him that I was going to the city to see you. He doesn’t mind what I do.” Hilde reached behind her and fiddled around with her bag for a moment before pulling out a book. She handed it to Kircheis. It took some effort for him to decipher the title, as it was written in the Alliance language. “Hank told me to give this to you. He said it was relevant to your last conversation.”

“What is it?” Martin asked.

Kircheis flipped the book open and laughed at what he found. It was heavily illustrated, even though it was a dense academic text. The inside cover had the scrawl of the book’s original owner, “Ex Libris Captain Armand Westerson,  _ Jamestown _ ,” and a competing stamp from the imperial archives, noting that the book was seized property. “An art history book about ancient Earth,” Kircheis said. “I guess he’s trying to save my soul.”

“Does he think it needs saving?” Martin asked, taking the book and flipping through it. He paused at several of the pictures. “What does this caption say?”

Kircheis leaned towards him in order to translate the provenance of a marble statue. Martin smiled. “He probably sent this more for you than for me,” Kircheis said. “You can have it.”

“I can’t read a word of it. You’ll have to read it to me.”

“My one year of language study isn’t going to get me that far,” Kircheis said. “We mostly learn useful things, like, ‘Surrender or be destroyed’.”

Martin frowned. “Then maybe you’re right that he thinks your soul needs saving.”

Kircheis smiled. “Alright, I’ll read it. But you’ll have to be patient with me.”

Martin bumped his shoulder on Kircheis’s in a friendly way, then put the book away in his own backpack. When he did, Kircheis caught a glimpse of a stack of papers. 

They talked about other subjects for a while, until they decided they had stayed in the cafe for too long, and then the trio walked out into the sweltering summer once again. “So, Triangle Street?” Hilde asked.

“Yeah,” Martin said. “This way.”

It was a bit of a walk, and the weather was so disgusting that even though they wanted to move faster to escape it, Martin and Hilde both were unable to push themselves to any kind of speed. Kircheis, who was used to the rigorous IOA physicals in all sorts of conditions, didn’t mind as much.

As they were heading down the main street, Hilde in between Kircheis and Martin, a car drove past them, screeched to a stop, and then reversed haphazardly down the street, causing a whole cacophony of horns, which brought Kircheis up short, thinking that there was maybe an accident in progress. Instead, the car, a slick convertible driven by a woman that Kircheis did not recognize, parked illegally on the side of the street next to them. The driver leaned over the side.

“Well, if it isn’t little Hildegarde von Mariendorf. And with a gentleman on either arm. I never thought I’d see the day.” The woman had black hair and sunglasses, and was wearing a sundress that Kircheis suspected cost as much as three weeks of his pay at the tavern.

Next to him, Hilde was blushing fiercely. “Hi Maggie,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Does one need a reason to visit the city?” the woman asked. “Don’t be rude; introduce me to your friends.”

“Maggie, this is Siegfried Kircheis and Martin Bufholtz. Siegfried, Martin, this is Baroness Magdalena von Westpfale.”

There was a moment of shared recognition between Magdalena and Kircheis. “I’ve heard of you!” Magdalena said enthusiastically. “Hank’s favorite student.”

Kircheis flushed. “I don’t--”

“Do the three of you want a ride somewhere?” Magdalena asked. “Hop in.”

The three looked between themselves for a second, and then Hilde shrugged and got in the front seat of the car, leaving Kircheis and Martin to take the back. “Thank you, Baroness,” Kircheis said.

“Where are you headed? It’s a hot day to be walking anywhere.” Magdalena said this as she pulled her car directly out into traffic, not really mindful of safety, as though she expected everyone else to just get out of her way, which, for the most part, they did.

“Triangle Street,” Hilde said.

“What are you heading there for?”

“It’s almost the fiftieth anniversary of the riot,” Kircheis said. “We’d just like to pay our respects.”

Magdalena made a face, one visible in the rearview mirror. Martin tensed up beside him. Even though the top of the car was open, Kircheis was sure that no one noticed him slide his hand along the leather seat and grab Martin’s hand, mostly to stop him from saying anything rude to their ride and Commander Leigh’s friend. 

“Sure,” Magdalena said after a second. “I can take you there.”

“What are you doing out?” Hilde asked.

“Dress shopping. You can see what I got.” She gestured vaguely to a bag that was at Hilde’s feet.

“What for?” Hilde asked. “Are you going back to court?”

“No,” Magdalena said. “I’m still in the depths of disgrace with all of them.” She tossed her head. “I’m sure I’ll be allowed back eventually, but for now, I’m enjoying my vacation from it all.”

“Then what’s the occasion?”

“I’ve been invited to a wedding,” Magdalena said with a smile. “And I need to dress nicely, so that when I compliment the bride on how much nicer she looks than I do, she will really feel like she’s accomplished something.” 

That was the strangest justification for anything Kircheis had ever heard.

“Whose wedding is it?”

“Hank’s friend Wolfgang Mittermeyer, and his  _ lovely _ fiancee, Evangeline, who I doubt you’ve met. Have you met Wolfgang?”

“I don’t believe so,” Hilde said.

“Sweet man, in some respects,” Magdalena said. “But he does not understand many things. I gave him some very severe words, once.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Oh, mostly that he should propose to her,” Magdalena said. “He felt like the situation was more complicated than it actually was. It’s not, though.” She laughed a little bit. “Maybe I have been away from court too long, that I’ve resorted to gossiping about the wedding of friends-of-friends with a high school student.”

“What was complicated about it?”

“Oh, I’m sure in ten years you’ll have the same sort of complication,” Magdalena said. “No need to learn to play that game early.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Magdalena reached over and tugged on Hilde’s ear, an action that made her already overheated cheeks turn deep red. “I’m sure you’ll have to get married someday.”

“I don’t know,” Hilde said. 

“What would your dear departed grandfather say, if he thought you were going to be the last of the Mariendorf line?”

“My father says--”

“Oh, Hilde, your father indulges you far more than any father has ever indulged their daughter, in the history of the universe.”

Martin glanced at Kircheis, making a questioning face, as if asking silently what the baroness knew. Kircheis shrugged. 

“Are you going to get married?” Hilde asked.

Magdalena laughed. “I will have to, someday, won’t I? It would satisfy my mother, certainly. Maybe I’ll even marry Hank. The kaiser did give his blessing to that, after all. It would be a shame to waste it.”

Both Hilde and Kircheis reacted to that, though Kircheis tried to keep the weird twist in his gut invisible. He could not imagine Commander Leigh marrying this woman, and he didn’t want to. Hilde visibly frowned. Magdalena saw this and tapped Hilde’s nose with a smile. Hilde turned away and looked out the side window.

In a car, the trip to Triangle Street was not very long. The place was less of a street and more of an open square, but formed by the intersection of three roads around an area where a triangular building had once stood, but had long since been demolished. The street was empty, most people wanting to be inside during this hottest part of the day, and the silence, aside from the idling of Magdalena’s car, was almost oppressive. The surrounding buildings were tall enough to block the sun, casting the street into a false twilight. The darkness was incongruous with the heat.

Martin got out of the car, taking his backpack with him. Kircheis followed him, and Hilde followed Kircheis. Magdalena stopped her car’s engine fully, then got out as well. 

Martin had wandered over to the side of one of the buildings. “You can still see the marks.” He pointed to an area of the wall where the brick seemed to be indented and slightly glassy, as though it had melted into slag with the heat of blaster fire.

“They weren’t going to tear the whole building down just to get rid of that,” Magdalena said dryly. “What are you doing?”

Martin was opening his backpack and pulling out the sheaf of papers that Kircheis had seen in there earlier. He had come prepared, and he started walking down the square, taping one up in every place he saw one of the old, scrubbed clean scorch marks; “REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED HERE,” and then a list of names written in bold red text.

“It’s not like anybody could really forget,” Magdalena said, but she leaned against the wall and carefully watched to make sure that nobody was coming down the street. Kircheis, wanting to get out of here as quickly as possible, helped Martin. Hilde did as well, and before long, they had hung up all the flyers.

When they were done, Magdalena ushered them back into the car, and drove a little distance away. “I didn’t know I was driving around a whole little gang of republicans,” Magdalena said. “I can see why you and Hank get along so famously.”

“You don’t have to be a republican to believe that a government should not slaughter its own citizens,” Martin said.

“Everything that has happened before will happen again,” Magdalena said. Her voice was light but her mouth was pinched.

“I hope not,” Kircheis said.

“What did happen?” Hilde asked. “I’m sorry to say that most of the history I know is what Hank has told me, and he’s not as interested in the modern kind.”

“It was during Otfried’s reign,” Martin said. “There was an assassination attempt against him. It didn’t succeed, and he blamed it on a republican group.”

“A bomb,” Kircheis said. “Planted in the palace.”

“My father remembered it all,” Magdalena said, sounding distant. “He was a kid, then, though. His father, my grandfather, worked in the ministry of the interior and said that they just picked someone to blame. They couldn’t let it go unpunished, but they didn’t have any real suspects.”

“Everyone knew they were innocent,” Martin said bitterly. “Even if they were republicans.”

“Then what happened?”

“They used to use that street for public executions,” Martin said. “They brought them there, and there was a whole crowd. But the crowd wasn’t there to watch the execution. They were there to stop it. I think they thought that if there were enough of them, they could rush the soldiers…” He shrugged. “It was a riot. The soldiers just started killing everyone who was in the streets.”

There was silence in the car for a second. “Why do you say it will happen again?” Hilde asked.

She didn’t respond for a second, looking pensively out of the car. “Friedrich remembers his father well enough to know that when you blame someone for a crime they didn’t commit, you don’t make a public spectacle out of it. But, sooner or later, somebody will forget.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's play everyone's favorite game "are they talking about being gay or doing a treason?" 
> 
> martin is like... Teen Activist. bless his heart he feels like he's doing A Lot but compared to like everyone else in this weird group he has fallen in with... lol. that boy loves distributing pamphlets. honestly I think it's sweet and it's nice to get some representation of like, normal dude who lives in the empire haha.
> 
> kircheis your teacher crush on yang is showing
> 
> the "everyone except hilde knows hilde is gay" dynamic is very funny. dw hilde you'll figure it out eventually
> 
> magdalena "I can excuse regicide, but I draw the line at republicanism" von westpfale. she's feeling a tiny bit guilty that she did end up kinda aiding the execution of a whole bunch of innocent people for the crime of killing ludwig, when magdalena a) knew exactly whodunnit and b) got her out of being accused of the crime. 
> 
> I know this chapter is chiller and less exciting than the two chapters that surround it (wedding next time) but the joy of fanfiction does come in being able to have random not much happens character chapters, and also I wanted to give some breathing room between the two intensely drama filled chapters
> 
> speaking of, here's an illustration to accompany last chapter
> 
> thank you to lydia and em for the beta read! follow me on tumblr @javert , on twitter @natsinator . read my original fiction @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven and bit.ly/arcadispark


	15. Don't Let Nothing Come Between You!

_ July 483 IC, Odin _

Yang needed to talk to someone, anyone, who was uninvolved in the situation. Unfortunately for him, the only person who fit that description and who he could speak to about the subject was Magdalena von Westpfale, who he suspected would be less than generous to him. 

(He was half tempted to wait until Eisenach was back on Odin for leave, corner the man, and rant to him, since he suspected that Eisenach knew (or at least suspected) some of Yang and Reuenthal’s personal problems. At the very least, Yang was certain that Eisenach would say nothing about it.)

But Magdalena was realistically the only one, so Yang said that he would meet her at her house. When he arrived, one of the servants escorted him all the way out to the back of her mansion, to where a pleasant little white pavilion sat among a well-tended rose garden. Magdalena was sprawled out on a lawn chair, drinking something that Yang suspected was about sixty percent alcohol by volume, wearing a light dress that concealed very little, and fanning herself with her omnipresent fan.

“Hank! Glad you could come join me in the shade,” she said, waving her hand to indicate the chair next to her. Yang sat, but did not sprawl as she did, instead sitting cross legged and sideways on the cushion. “Want something to drink?” Before he could even answer, she reached into the cooler next to her and handed him an already made beverage. Yang took it gratefully, and discovered that it was approximately as alcoholic as he expected.

“Thanks.”

“I assume you’ve come here to tell me all about your many woes,” Magdalena said. “And I, of course, am happy to listen.”

“How did you know I was having problems?”

“Not only do I know you’re having problems,” she said, “but I can tell you exactly what those problems are.”

“Can you? I wasn’t aware that you were all-seeing and all-knowing.”

“I’m greater than the great god Odin,” Magdalena said. “At least when it comes to piecing together everyone’s personal little string of issues.”

“You’re drunk, and it’s only eleven in the morning.”

“What better things do I have to do with my time?”

“Listen to me complain sober. So, what problem do you think it is that I’m having?”

“You slept with your friend Oskar, or you’re debating if you should, anyway.”

When Yang did not say anything, completely shocked at Magdalena not only guessing correctly, but without any context, Magdalena saw his nonplussed expression and said, “I guess I was right, then. Which is it? Did you sleep with him?”

Yang rubbed the back of his neck. “Does it matter?”

“So, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Congratulations.” She raised her glass. “To joining the elite ranks of the deviants. ”

“Prosit,” Yang muttered.

“So, your problem is that you feel very guilty about this, I assume.”

“Or something. How did you know?”

“I should be angry with you, you know.”

“For sleeping with Reuenthal?”

“No, idiot. I was sure that you would invite me as your date to Evangeline and Wolfgang’s wedding, and yet you haven’t mentioned a word of it.”

“How did you even know that was happening?”

“Eva and I have become  _ bosom _ friends,” Magdalena said. “It was so kind of you to bring me to lunch that one time. She has become a bright spot in my life.”

“You’re sleeping with her?”

Magdalena sighed. “She’s so tragically uninterested that it hurts. Pretty little thing, though. But she is sweet, and I have her over for lunch whenever she’s in town, and we keep up a correspondence. She invited me to the wedding.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was waiting for you to come to your senses,” Magdalena said. “But it seems that you have just gone and gotten yourself more confused. How sad for you.” She took another sip of her drink.

“So, you know the situation.”

“I can infer the situation. Your friend Wolf was waffling about joining respectable and decent society or abandoning it completely, and he decided to do the honorable thing and propose to Evangeline, who is really devoted to him, for the record; and, because he’s a good and decent person, he decided that he shouldn’t cheat on his future wife with his lover; which is to say that you are free to get with Oskar, who you’ve only been pining over since, honestly, I don’t even know.” She paused for a second and looked at him. “Really, you should thank me.”

“Why?”

“I told Wolf that he should propose to Eva. When we were at lunch. I yelled at him in the bathroom.”

“Why in the world did you do that?”

“It’s not right to string her along,” Magdalena said. “Besides, it’s a fact of life that we all must get married someday. It’s better for him to do it now than for him to make her miserable for several more years.”

“But--”

“But what?” Magdalena asked. “It was going to happen eventually. You knew it, I knew it, he certainly knew it, or he wouldn’t have been having this difficulty to begin with.”

“Do you think that’s fair to Evangeline?”

“Fair? If he doesn’t treat her well, I’ll kill him myself.” She looked at her drink, then finished it, leaning her head back on her arm and closing her eyes. “You know I would.”

“Mittermeyer wouldn’t--”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware,” Magdalena said, waving her hand vaguely above her head. “Good and honorable man, as we’ve established.”

“So you know that’s not what I meant about it being fair.”

“What?” she asked. “He likes her well enough. He looks at her kind of like a puppy looks at his master. There are far worse types of husband to have.”

“He doesn’t love her the way he loves Reuenthal.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so?’”

Magdalena sat up, propping herself up on her elbow. “Look. Hank. You don’t love me, right?”

“Well, I don’t--”

“Not the way you love-- or whatever it is you feel-- about Oskar. Great, I get that. And yet, I assume that some day you will propose to me, and we will have a beautiful wedding in which I wear white and you wear your dress uniform, and it will be wonderful. We can invite the kaiser, and he will have the greatest pleasure of regretfully not attending but sending some lavish gift.”

“I’m not going to marry you--”

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” Magdalena said. “You might. Anyway, as I was saying, I would be perfectly happy to marry you. I think we could even have a decent time sleeping with each other, though I think I would want to think long and hard before deciding to get pregnant. That’s a commitment. I expect our children would come out weird looking.”

“You really have thought this out.” Yang didn’t know if he should be impressed, flattered, or concerned. He ended up at some combination of the three. 

“I like to be prepared for the future. Anyway, forget about all that except for the key piece. All that’s required to have a good and functional marriage is for people to be at minimum friends with each other. He clears that bar with flying colors, so it’s fine.”

“I’m assuming that in this situation where you and I get married, you at the very least continue to sleep with whomever you want on the side?”

“Hank, how could you accuse me of such a thing?” she said. “But yes, of course. And so would you. I certainly wouldn’t care, and it would probably make us both happier in the long run.”

“But you see how this is a fundamentally different situation from Mittermeyer and Evangeline, right?”

“Not in particular, no,” she said.

“You’ve already established that Evangeline is, er, uninterested in a situation like that, and that Mittermeyer is honest… He’s not going to cheat on her.”

Magdalena made a face without opening her eyes. “That man needs to be honest with himself about what he really wants, and worry less about being honest with everybody else.”

“Okay, but that’s not the issue--”

“Husbands have been cheating on their wives since the invention of marriage,” Magdalena said. “And wives have been doing the same for just as long, though it’s a little tricker. Everyone just pretends that the institution of marriage turns you into an honest man, but it just gives you a new route to dishonesty, and that’s no worse than it was before.”

“You’re drunker than I thought, since you’re not making any sense.”

“Am I  _ wrong _ ?”

“I can’t even tell. But look, the problem is not a question of it being normal or not, which, for the record, it’s not,” Yang said. “It’s a question of Mittermeyer respecting Evangeline. I thought since you were her friend you wouldn’t want her to get cheated on.”

“What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. I’m only holding them to the same standards to which I hold myself,” Magdalena said. “I certainly don’t care if people have secrets, Herr Hank von Leigh.”

“It shocks me that you don’t realize that not everybody operates on your same crazy level.”

“If they did, the world would be a better place.”

“Would it?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely. Hank, if it would make you feel any better, I could tell Evangeline about her future husband’s homosexual affair pre-emptively, and that would clear the water for everyone.”

“You are absolutely not going to do that.”

“Why shouldn’t I? If you’re so concerned about people not keeping secrets from her.”

“It’s Mittermeyer’s secret to tell. And besides, it won’t even be a thing if he does stop, er, being with Reuenthal.”

“Has he?”

“I think he’s trying to.”

“And that’s what you feel guilty about.”

“I don’t even know.” Yang finished his own drink, looking unhappily out over the rose garden. Magdalena heard him put his empty glass down, so, without looking, she reached into her cooler and pulled out another drink to hand to him. Yang took it. He was rapidly losing any legs to stand on with protesting Magdalena’s early-morning drunkenness, but being sober was feeling less pleasant by the second, so he drank.

“It’s not your fault whatever Wolfgang does. It’s not like you’re his mother or something.”

“I am his friend, though.”

“Okay, I’ll ask you this: are Wolf and Oskar over? Are they done?”

“Mittermeyer implied that he wanted to just be friends with Reuenthal. They had a fight about it, and then Reuenthal slept with me. I would say yes.”

“You  _ would _ , but you  _ don’t _ .”

“You’ve seen the way they act,” Yang muttered. “The moment they’re alone together, I don’t know if either of their resolves will last.”

“Okay, and?”

“And what?”

“You feel bad about this because…?”

“Well if Reuenthal is sleeping with me, that makes things more complicated, doesn’t it?”

“You sleep with Oskar, Oskar sleeps with Wolf, Wolf marries Evangeline, so what?”

“You certainly have a rosy and uncomplicated view of the situation.”

“Do you think that Oskar is just using you as a rebound, or something?”

“No…” Yang said.

“Whose feelings are you even worried about hurting here?”

“Evangeline’s?”

“I thought we established that she is not your problem, so try that one again.”

“Mittermeyer?”

“If he really has ended things with Oskar, then he has zero right to complain about anything that you do from here on out. The fact that you feel bad for him is sweet of you, but, again, he really brought this upon himself.”

“Okay, but if he hasn’t--”

“Gods, Hank. Get over yourself.” She was exasperated.

“What?”

“You’re pretending that it’s him you’re worried about, but it’s one hundred percent you. You’re worried that Oskar’s going to abandon you the moment Wolf is back on the menu, aren’t you?”

“No--” But he wasn’t convincing enough.

“Would he?”

“Reuenthal isn’t--”

“Would you be  _ jealous _ ?”

“I should not have come here to talk to you,” Yang said. “You’re the worst.”

“You’re not drunk enough to understand how simple this all is.”

Yang, unfortunately, had to agree with that, so he drank the rest of his glass, then laid back on the lawn chair, staring up at the whitewashed slats of the pavilion above them. A mild breeze brushed past, bringing relief from the still heat. For all that Yang was stressing, and Magdalena was annoying him, the day was beautiful, and he couldn’t help but feel that reflected into the future, the confusion mixing with the curl of pleasure in his stomach when he thought of Reuenthal. 

“If it’s any help,” Magdalena said after a long second of silence, “it’s been very clear to me that Oskar is extremely possessive of you. I don’t think that he would kick you to the curb, so to speak.”

“How do you know that?”

She raised an eyebrow, still with her eyes closed. “You came to my birthday party with him and Wolf, and all you had to do was act the tiniest bit friendly to me and he practically wanted to murder me. It was pretty funny.”

“That’s just because he hates women.”

She laughed a little. “It’s not, and you know it’s not.”

“Okay, well, he can feel possessive of me and just not want me to be with anybody else, but still abandon me for Mittermeyer.”

“I should get his number and tell him that you said that, see what he thinks of you thinking so little of him.”

“Stop it,” Yang said. “You know what I mean. He was happy enough to just have me as a friend for years--”

“Oh, was he? Because it seemed like he jumped on you awful fast for someone who was happy to just have you as a friend.”

Yang didn’t really have a response to that.

“He’s a jealous man who wants to possess everything he loves,” Magdalena said. “All I’m saying is that it doesn’t hurt to let him.”

“You think it doesn’t.”

Magdalena gestured vaguely in the air above her head. “How could it possibly be worse for him to have the both of you than it was for you to sit there for years, painfully into him, while he was with Wolf exclusively? This has to be better.”

“You have a lot of confidence that this sort of situation could even come about.”

She smiled. “It’s easy, if you let it happen.”

“I don’t think so. Besides, Mittermeyer is still marrying Evangeline.”

“Forget about that. Would you really still be jealous of Wolf?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said.

“Well, maybe you should sleep with him, too.”

“What?” Yang asked, his voice somewhat strangled. Magdalena opened her eyes, rolled onto her side, and reached over to pinch Yang’s hot cheek, grinning. He slapped her hand away gently.

“You are so cute when you act all stupid,” Magdalena said.

“Why is your ‘solution’ to every problem just to make things even messier?”

“It’s simply in my nature,” Magdalena said. “But don’t say that you don’t want to, or haven’t at least thought about it.”

“It’s not going to happen, Maggie.”

“Like I said, never say never.” She grinned at him, and Yang shook his head and rolled his eyes.

* * *

_ August 483 IC, Odin _

Yang was in Reuenthal’s bed, in his apartment that he rented in the capital. The first slender fingers of morning light were coming in through the blinds, but it wasn’t that that woke Yang up. He was roused from his sleep by Reuenthal trying to get out of bed. The sheets were tangled around Yang, which made it harder for him to get his hand out to grab at Reuenthal’s arm before he escaped.

“Where are you going?” Yang mumbled. “It’s Saturday. You don’t have work.”

“Some of us can’t lay in bed all day long,” Reuenthal said, but his voice was warm.

“It’s the last weekend before I have to start teaching again.”

“So, you’re saying that I should indulge you in your laziness?”

“Mmm, someday I will convince you to be as lazy as I am.”

Reuenthal leaned over him and brushed some of the hair off Yang’s face, which made him smile. “I somehow doubt it,” Reuenthal said. He kissed Yang slowly, then easily twisted his arm to free himself from Yang’s grasp, getting out of bed. “I’m going to shower and make breakfast. You can go back to sleep, if you really want to be lazy.”

He vanished out of the bedroom, and Yang heard the shower turn on a few minutes later. He didn’t get out of bed, staring up at the dappled light on the ceiling, and trying to think about nothing. The light glinted off of the sword that Yang had given Reuenthal so long ago, hung up above the headboard of the bed. It pleased him that Reuenthal kept it in a place of honor, but Magdalena was right that it probably was going to fall down on him someday. He heard Reuenthal finish showering, go into the kitchen, and start opening the fridge for food. Only then did Yang finally get up.

After he was done showering, Yang found Reuenthal in the kitchen making omelettes. There was tea for him and coffee for Reuenthal.

“Glad you could join me.”

“You seem to assume that I would,” Yang said, pointing out the fact that Reuenthal had made breakfast for them both.

“Oh? Was I being presumptuous?”

“No, I appreciate you appealing to my better nature,” Yang said and sat down at the little table. They ate in silence for a few minutes, Yang still waking up.

Reuenthal looked at him, and Yang smiled back. “Thank you for breakfast,” Yang finally said.

“You’re welcome.”

“When did you learn to cook?” He had been wondering this, since Reuenthal had prepared several meals for him since he had moved into this apartment (which had a private kitchen, quite unlike Yang’s rented room in his boarding house.)

“I’ve always been able to,” Reuenthal said.

“You weren’t born with the ability.”

“Who says I wasn’t?”

Yang looked at him. “And I’m sure you came out of the womb knowing how to do arithmetic and play the piano, as well.”

“Perhaps.”

“I want to know, though, really,” Yang said, leaning his elbows on the table. “Did your boys’ school put you through a home economics course?”

Somewhat stiffly, Reuenthal said, “When one has a father whose caloric needs are met primarily through alcohol consumption, one must learn to cook or starve gracefully.”

“Oh,” Yang said. “Sorry.”

“It’s a useful skill, even if it is womanish.”

Yang rolled his eyes. “Seriously?”

Reuenthal shrugged. “If one learns to cook, one hardly needs a wife for anything.”

Yang looked down at his plate and tried to switch the topic away from Mittermeyer’s upcoming wedding. “I’m a terrible cook,” he admitted.

“Oh?”

“Well, you know, my mother died when I was five.”

“I didn’t know.”

“And then I went to go live with my father, on his ship, and we had a hired cook for the crew.”

“You weren’t ever tasked with helping out?” Reuenthal was interested. Yang knew he loved learning these tiny facts about Yang’s previous life, no matter how boring they were, because he was the only one who ever got to hear them. Yang liked telling them for the same reason.

“Once or twice. But our cook-- his name was, oh, jeeze, Brendan Stoneworth, short little guy-- saw me accidentally put a frozen pizza in the oven so close to the heating coils that it caught on fire, and after that he would chase me out of the kitchen with a knife every time I tried to go in.”

Reuenthal chuckled at this anecdote. 

“My dad had a notoriously undiscerning palate,” Yang said. “He would eat literally anything. It was a problem, because sometimes he’d wander into the kitchen and use the logic of eating the least fresh thing so that it wouldn’t be wasted before it went bad, and of course this led to him getting food poisoning several times, from eating leftovers that had been around too long.” Yang shook his head. “The man knew the value of the dinar, but at great personal cost, I think.”

Reuenthal smiled. “You’ve inherited a similar quality, I assume.”

“No,” Yang said. “I’m not indiscriminate, just lazy. There’s a difference. I can appreciate the finer culinary joys in life.”

“Which are?”

“Tea and alcohol. Not necessarily in that order.”

“I see.” The conversation lapsed a little as they finished their breakfasts. Reuenthal stood to wash the dishes. Yang leaned against the counter next to him, finishing his tea.

“Are you coming to Mittermeyer’s get-together tonight?”

“I am not,” Reuenthal said.

“Why not?” Yang asked.

Reuenthal scrubbed the omelette pan with a little more force than was necessary. “I have absolutely no desire to attend his bachelor’s party.”

“It’s not really a party. We’re just going to get drinks.”

“Regardless, I am not interested.”

“Bittenfeld, Eisenach, and Wahlen will be there. We can have a nice reunion.”

“I am perfectly capable of seeing them on my own time.”

“Mittermeyer would want you to come.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Have you spoken to him recently?”

“No.”

“I have,” Yang said. “And he wants you to come.”

“It is liberating to no longer have Mittermeyer’s many, varied, and self-destructive wants be my concern. It is unfortunate that they still seem to be yours.”

“I’m his friend,” Yang said. “And you could be, too.”

“Why should I want whatever tepid version of friendship Mittermeyer thinks that he wants to have with me?”

“Because thinking about him the way things are clearly makes you miserable.”

“Then I would request that you stop reminding me of him.”

“You hardly need me to do that,” Yang said. 

Reuenthal stopped washing the dishes for a second, pausing with his hands in the running water so hot that steam was coming up out of the sink. “From the way you are pushing me to speak with him, it would seem that you don’t want me to be with you at all.”

“You usually have to be drunk to say something that mean,” Yang said, voice intentionally mild. He put his empty mug down in the sink. Although Reuenthal’s comment had hurt exactly as much as Reuenthal had intended it to, Yang stood behind him and wrapped his arms around Reuenthal’s waist for a second, then kissed his neck. “If you change your mind, you should come,” he said. “If you don’t, I suppose I’ll see you later this week.”

“Yeah,” Reuenthal said. He wasn’t going to apologize, and Yang knew it, so Yang just gathered up his belongings and headed out of the apartment, taking the stairs so as not to be seen by anyone in the elevator.

* * *

Later that day, Yang met his friends in a dim bar in the capital. They were holding the wedding there, rather than in Mittermeyer’s hometown, which certainly made life easier for Yang and all of his friends, some of whom were only on the planet for a few days. Evangeline had an apartment in the capital now, and a promise of employment in a publishing house that Magdalena had found by pulling some strings somewhere, so it was as fine a place as any for the couple to get married.

The particular bar that Mittermeyer had picked was one that Yang was vaguely familiar with, and it had been picked because it had a room with pool tables in the back and very cheap beer. This was its only redeeming quality. In other respects, it was slightly dingy, loud, and a little too dark, with lights that flickered sometimes when the people upstairs moved around too violently. 

It was very nice to see Eisenach, Bittenfeld, and Wahlen again. It had been far too long since (almost) all of them were in the same place, and Yang had missed the easy atmosphere that their group had had. Eisenach was also a commander now, while Bittenfeld and Wahlen were still lieutenant commanders like Mittermeyer and the absent Reuenthal.

Mittermeyer was in good spirits, or at least successfully pretending to be, and was making good use of the fact that his friends were buying all the drinks. After some time, it became clear that Reuenthal wasn’t going to show up.

“Our esteemed number one not able to make it tonight?” Bittenfeld asked, leaning heavily on the pool table to take a shot. “I thought he was working at the Ministry of War, so he really has no excuse.”

“He wasn’t feeling well,” Yang lied. Bittenfeld’s shot missed, so Eisenach took his turn.

Bittenfeld poked Yang with his cue. “I never thought I’d see the day that Reuenthal would turn up his nose at drinking.”

“Maybe he’s turning up his nose at spending the evening with you,” Wahlen joked. “If he has a headache, your voice would certainly aggravate it.”

“Well, forget about it,” Yang said. “I’m sure you’ll catch him next time you’re on Odin. It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”

Eisenach, who had just sunk the last ball, met Yang’s eyes and raised an eyebrow. Yang looked away quickly.

“It’s true, we do have that other number one to celebrate as his replacement,” Bittenfeld said. “Mittermeyer, you seen Reuenthal while you’ve been on the planet?”

“No,” Mittermeyer said. “I’m hoping he’ll come tomorrow, but if he’s sick, I won’t hold my breath.” His easy smile faltered slightly, but Yang thought that Bittenfeld probably didn’t notice.

“I don’t know if I actually congratulated you on your engagement, and your marriage, of course,” Wahlen said. “So, congratulations.”

“Thank you.” He clapped Wahlen’s shoulder. “You’re engaged too, right?”

“Yes, though we’re waiting much longer to actually tie the knot,” Wahlen said.

“I was curious about that,” Bittenfeld said. “You get her pregnant or something? Short engagement, isn’t it?”

Mittermeyer laughed. “No, it was really-- my mother thought I would chicken out if we waited too long, so she made me schedule it as quickly as possible.”

“I’ve heard many things,” Bittenfeld said, “but this is the first time I’ve ever heard Wolfgang Mittermeyer be called a coward.”

“It took all my courage to propose in the first place, you know.”

“Hah,” Bittenfeld said. “How will you manage to walk down the aisle, then?”

“I don’t know. I suppose we’re about to find out.”

“And when are you going to become a respectable married man, Leigh?” Wahlen asked.

Yang rubbed the back of his head. “Er, I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you mention something about a baroness in your letters?” Bittenfeld asked. “What was that all about? You still seeing her?”

“Magdalena von Westpfale? You’ll meet her tomorrow, I guess.” He laughed a little. “You’d probably like her, Bittenfeld. She’s kinda your style.”

“Are you saying I should steal your date?” Bittenfeld asked. “Is she good-looking? Rich goes without saying, I assume.”

“You’re welcome to try, honestly,” Yang said. “She confuses me more than anything else.”

“What do you mean by my style, though?”

“You know, bold,” Yang said, which was the politest characterization he could make of the two of them. Bittenfeld laughed.

Mittermeyer seemed happy to have the conversation be on Yang’s strange life situation rather than his own. They got progressively drunker, which Yang supposed was the point, and he felt pleasantly dazed as he leaned on the side of the pool table next to Mittermeyer and watched Bittenfeld give Wahlen bad pool playing advice. 

“This is nice,” Yang said. “I’m glad you guys could all come.”

“Just like old times,” Wahlen said. “Sans Reuenthal, of course. I hope he comes tomorrow. I’d like to see how he’s been.”

Mittermeyer was silent, looking away and taking a long drink from his beer.

“You have a falling out or something?” Wahlen raised an eyebrow at Yang, who shrugged helplessly. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Mittermeyer said. “Absolutely nothing.” Wahlen was too drunk to press the issue, so he shrugged and let it go, perhaps not wanting to ruin Mittermeyer’s night, hearing the clear edge in his voice.

Eisenach was watching this exchange take place. Mittermeyer put his beer down on the pool table, and Bittenfeld hit one of the balls directly into it, bouncing it off the side of the glass into the pocket. He let out a whoop of laughter, which distracted everyone enough that Yang and Wahlen didn’t notice Mittermeyer escaping to the bathroom, quickly followed by Eisenach.

“Where’d the man of the hour go?” Bittenfeld asked. “Can’t buy him drinks if he’s not here.”

“We should probably cut him off,” Yang said. “Eva will be unhappy if he can’t walk straight tomorrow.”

“He’ll sober up overnight,” Wahlen said. 

“You know, this is a boring bachelor’s party, since we didn’t even have any entertainment.”

“And what would you propose, Bittenfeld?”

“We could have gone to a gentlemen’s club,” Bittenfeld said.

“Mittermeyer chose the venue. If he wanted that, he would have picked it.”

“The whole point is to spend your last night as a free man being adventurous,” Bittenfeld said. “It makes me ashamed to learn that he’s not hearing the call of that adventure. We could drag him somewhere more fun.”

“I’m probably going to drag him home to bed after this,” Yang said, checking the time. “It’s late.” The mood had soured, somehow, though Yang couldn’t have pointed exactly to the moment that it had. The easy camaraderie and schoolday reminiscence had fallen apart, at least in his mind, and he was left feeling too-drunk and rattled, looking up towards the bathroom doors and wondering when Eisenach and Mittermeyer would return. He let Bittenfeld and Wahlen’s progressively less coherent conversation wash over him for a while. The other patrons of the bar were slowly leaving, allowing Bittenfeld’s loud voice to take up more and more space in the room. Yang felt like he could barely breathe. The atmosphere was thick and smoky, and he felt bad.

“I need some air,” Yang said. “I’m gonna go outside for a second.”

Wahlen seemed slightly concerned, but Yang gave him a thin smile and headed out. The city street was quiet, but the muggy air outside was hardly any better than inside. Yang tilted his head back against the brick wall of the building and stared up into the sky, clouds drifting in front of the stars. He tried to pick out constellations for a minute, but his vision swam, and staring up so much made him dizzy, which made him nauseous. He scraped his hand along the wall of the building, stumbling a little, until he found an alleyway and a dumpster. He leaned over, as though he was going to throw up, but he didn’t. He stayed there until he felt his phone buzz in his pocket.

Eisenach.

< where are u?

< can u take M home?

< i’m too drunk to deal with him crying on me rn

> outside

That was about all he could manage to text.

Eisenach found him outside, Yang having made his way out of the alley. Mittermeyer leaned heavily on Eisenach’s arm. 

“Thanks,” Yang said to Eisenach. “I’ll take you home, Mittermeyer.”

“No,” Mittermeyer said.

“Yeah, come on.”

“I don’t want Eva to see,” he said. His voice was rough, as though he had been crying, or was holding in tears. Yang looked between Mittermeyer and Eisenach rather helplessly.

Eisenach pulled out his phone and texted Yang, even though he was standing right there. Yang frowned. 

< take him to your house

< i assume R is not there

“Fine,” Yang said aloud. “Come on, Mittermeyer. You can crash at my place.” Mittermeyer seemed relieved to lean on Yang’s side after that, though it wasn’t as though Yang was any less drunk or more stable than he was. “Eisenach, can you tell Bittenfeld and Wahlen that we’re leaving?”

Eisenach gave him a flat and annoyed look.

“Fine, nevermind,” Yang said. “See you tomorrow, I guess.” He tugged Mittermeyer forwards and flagged down a taxi. In the car, Mittermeyer stared out the rear window at Eisenach, who stood with arms crossed, watching them depart. They were silent on the ride, which, since the trains weren’t running this late, was fairly far outside the city to Yang’s apartment. He tried to let them in and up the stairs quietly, but it was difficult when both of them were too drunk to navigate the dark stairs properly. Yang fumbled with his key until Mittermeyer took it from him and opened the door to his room.

Mittermeyer stood stiffly in Yang’s living room, and Yang made it to his bathroom and got him a cup of water from the sink. He handed it to Mittermeyer, who looked at it as though he didn’t really understand what to do with it.

“What’s Eva’s number?” Yang asked. “I should tell her where you are.” He spoke slowly, trying to make sure the words were in the right order. Mittermeyer reached into his pocket and handed Yang his phone. Yang held it out for Mittermeyer to unlock.

He fumblingly texted Evangeline.

> hi eva

> this is yank

> took mittermeyer back to my apartment

> everything is fine he is fine

> very drunk

> see you tomorrow m

Yang slipped the phone back into Mittermeyer’s pocket, then pushed Mittermeyer in the vague direction of the bedroom. Mittermeyer allowed himself to be pushed. Better for Mittermeyer to sleep in the bed so he’d be well rested in the morning, since he was the one getting married. The bed was unmade, but Mittermeyer didn’t care as he slumped down onto it. He didn’t lay down, but he sat heavily, and stared blankly at the mess of Yang’s room, in the too-harsh overhead light. Yang didn’t really know what to do with himself, and so he ended up sitting down on the floor. He should go back out to the living room and sleep on the couch, but he couldn’t quite find the will to move his body, so he just leaned against the side of the bed, his head near Mittermeyer’s legs.

Mittermeyer’s eyes flicked with some comprehension between a few things in the room: the two dirty glasses and mostly-empty whiskey bottle on Yang’s bedside table; the only thing hung up in the open side of the closet-- a single, clean uniform that was not Yang’s; the sticky note that Reuenthal had left on Yang’s mirror the previous Monday morning, written in his distinctive hand, “You are out of toothpaste-- using that tube is like squeezing blood from a stone. Buy more.”

“Reuenthal was here?” Mittermeyer asked.

“Yeah,” Yang said. He didn’t have the wherewithal to lie about it.

“Oh.” Mittermeyer lay back on the bed, head hitting the wall.

“I’m sorry,” Yang said. 

Mittermeyer shook his head and was silent for so long that Yang thought he had fallen asleep. Finally, he asked, in a soft and plaintive voice, “Why won’t he talk to me?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said, shaking his head and feeling dizzy again. He was going to have a headache in the morning that he was already regretting.

“I just want to see him,” Mittermeyer said. “Can you tell him that?”

“Yeah,” Yang said. He wasn’t going to tell Mittermeyer that he already had tried telling Reuenthal that, over and over.

“I just want to see him,” he said again, then rolled onto his side, clutching Yang’s rumpled pillow to his chest. “That’s all. I promise that’s all.”

“You don’t have to promise,” Yang said.

“Please,” Mittermeyer said.

“What?”

“Let me promise.”

Yang shook his head and was silent. He wondered if Mittermeyer would say something else, but in the long stretch of silence between them, the sound of his breathing evened out, and he fell asleep, hand draped over the side of Yang’s bed. Yang couldn’t quite move, not even to turn out the light, so he stared across the room until he, too, slumped over and fell asleep.

* * *

It was lucky for the both of them that Mittermeyer’s wedding was in the late afternoon, because that gave them both a little bit of time to feel more human. Yang certainly woke up feeling more disgusting and hungover than he ever had in his life, and he suspected that Mittermeyer felt the same. He begged some breakfast out of his landladies while Mittermeyer showered and got dressed in some of Yang’s clothes, so that he could go home and actually get ready to get married.

They sat at Yang’s little table in his living room and drank as much coffee as they could physically bear. Yang kept rubbing his eyes, as if that would keep the sunlight from coming in and stabbing them.

“What were you doing with Eisenach last night?” Yang finally asked.

Mittermeyer shrugged. “He just talked to me.”

“Like, he texted you?”

“No,” Mittermeyer said. “We had a conversation.”

Yang frowned. “What did he say?”

“I don’t really remember.” This didn’t seem to be the entire truth. “Did you tell him about--”

“No,” Yang said. “But I think he’s known for a while.”

“This is why I can’t have secrets,” Mittermeyer said, finishing his coffee and looking into the bottom of the cup as though he expected more to spontaneously generate. “People find out.”

“Eisenach isn’t going to tell anyone.”

“Sure.” He sounded like he agreed with the surface of Yang’s statement, but he wasn’t going to change his mind about secrets in general.

“Do you want me to go with you back to your place?” Yang asked.

“I don’t need an escort. I’m not going to run away.”

“Did I say that you were?”

“My head is killing me, Leigh,” Mittermeyer said. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Yang said. “Don’t worry about it. Just cheer up before you get to Evangeline.”

Mittermeyer cracked a smile at that. “I’ll try.”

“You feeling any better this morning? Aside from being hungover, anyway?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good.” Mittermeyer was steadfastly not mentioning Reuenthal, which was perhaps an improvement. He hadn’t even said anything about the fact that Yang and Reuenthal were together, despite certainly knowing. Yang had caught him looking at the sticky note on the mirror in the morning.

“I’m just ready to do this so that things can be normal,” Mittermeyer said.

“Er, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Are you nervous?”

“I guess,” Mittermeyer said. He smiled a little. “Eva is patient with me, so I’m not nervous about her.”

“That’s good.”

“I do love her,” he said after a second. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” Yang said. “I’m happy for you.” This wasn’t entirely true, but he wasn’t going to say anything more complicated than that.

Mittermeyer smiled at him. “Thank you.”

* * *

The wedding ceremony was held in the rented hall of a hotel in the capital, a pretty nice, if small, place. The actual guest list was minimal, so the small hall was the perfect size. Mostly, the guests were Evangeline’s friends from her college, Mittermeyer’s extended family, and then Mittermeyer’s small group of school friends. There was no sign of Reuenthal, which didn’t surprise Yang, but did make him feel bad. He was seated in between Magdalena and Bittenfeld, behind Mittermeyer’s immediate family, parents and grandparents.

Yang felt stiff in his dress uniform, which he hadn’t worn in a long time, and he felt awkward making obligate small talk with Mittermeyer’s parents, whom he didn’t like that much. He was relieved when the ceremony actually began.

Mittermeyer walked in to the front of the room, along with the officiant, the hired pianist at the side beginning to play something simple, gradually swelling as the doors in the back of the room opened, revealing Evangeline. The late afternoon sunlight streamed in through the large windows, catching in her blonde hair, reflecting off her blindingly white dress. Yang craned his neck to look at her. She had white flowers in her hair, and a wispy veil covered her face. She seemed nervous, clutching her bouquet in both hands, visibly trembling. Still, she smiled, and when she looked up at Mittermeyer, seemed to relax a little bit.

Mittermeyer, for his part, didn’t seem nervous. There was no trace of lingering hangover on his face. He smiled brilliantly at Evangeline, turning his whole body to follow her as she walked down the aisle.

Yang had thought he might feel worse, watching this, but the complete surety in Mittermeyer’s posture gave him some relief. They could be happy together, he thought.

Bittenfeld leaned over and, in the approximation that was Bittenfeld’s version of a whisper, he said, “He’s a lucky one, isn’t he?” And then, after a second: “I suppose Mittermeyer isn’t too bad of a catch himself, either.” Yang rolled his eyes at that, while Eisenach glared at Bittenfeld until he shut up. Magdalena heard him, and covered her mouth with her fan to hide her smile.

The two of them stood side by side at the front of the hall. The officiant began reading the long text for the ceremony, invoking all the gods and goddesses to bless the new couple. Mittermeyer and Evangeline were stiff and silent, kneeling for the blessing, then standing to say their vows.

They held hands, facing each other. The whole room was silent as they stared into each other’s eyes and the officiant wrapped their hands loosely with the ceremonial white ribbon.

In front of Yang, Mittermeyer’s mother let out a few loud sniffles, and his father handed her a tissue. 

The officiant read the words for the vows. Mittermeyer delivered the lines with utmost sincerity, his voice clear and light.. Evangeline repeated them, her voice almost too soft for Yang to hear, even though the room was small and quiet.

The pair looked at each other tenderly as Mittermeyer lifted her hand, looking down at it as though he had never seen it this closely before as he slipped the ring onto her finger.

They kissed, and for a moment, Yang thought that perhaps Mittermeyer was right, and that everything would be fine.

He kept that feeling until the ceremony was done, and everyone headed out onto the steps to take photographs.

“I told you that this would be nice, didn’t I?” Magdalena asked him as they watched Mittermeyer and Evangeline get their photos taken. It was golden hour, and the light glinted a warm yellow off the marble steps onto the couple. They were radiant, and they looked at each other as though there were no one else around, despite the onlooking guests and photographer gesturing at them to stand in various configurations and positions. They were looking into the sun, trying not to ruin their photos by squinting. 

“Did you?” Yang asked.

“You were nervous for no reason.”

“You just like to feel like you’re right.”

“I am always right,” Magdalena said. She waved cheerfully at Evangeline, who smiled back at Yang and Magdalena.

While everyone was waiting for the general exodus to go to the reception, there was a sudden muttering at the back of the crowd. 

“Hey, Reuenthal, you’re late!” Bittenfeld called out.

Yang’s stomach sank. Magdalena leaned forward, a shocked and curious expression on her face. Reuenthal was walking up through the crowd, moving stiffly, heading directly towards Mittermeyer and Evangeline.

Yang wanted to go grab him and drag him away, but Magdalena restrained him, her fingers digging into his arm. Eisenach was frowning, Wahlen was extremely confused. Mittermeyer’s parents seemed shocked and alarmed-- Yang had to wonder how much they knew.

Mittermeyer was frozen in place for a second, holding Evangeline’s hand, but then his face broke into a wide smile. Reuenthal looked at him, knelt down, took Evangeline’s other hand, and kissed it. He looked at Mittermeyer again for a single instant, then stood, turned sharply on his heel, and walked away, back through the crowd. He didn’t meet Yang’s eye, or anyone else’s.

Evangeline seemed very confused, and she looked at Mittermeyer for reassurance about what had just happened. Mittermeyer, who was still smiling, shrugged, then leaned forward to kiss her, which seemed to satisfy most people, including Evangeline, who put her hand on his chest and smiled at him adoringly.

“What in the universe was that about?” Wahlen asked, coming up to Yang.

“I don’t know,” Yang lied. “Uh, did you see where he went?”

Eisenach pointed down the street. Yang extracted himself from Magdalena’s grasp. “I’ll meet you at the reception,” he said. “Don’t wait for me.”

He pushed his way through the guests and down the street, looking for Reuenthal. The street was the normal crowd of any busy street in the capital, and Yang had waited a little too long to chase after him, so he almost missed Reuenthal duck down into the nearest subway station. 

Yang ran down the steps, pushing past the crowd trying to emerge from the station and into the street. He stumbled a little on the steps, grabbed the rail, slid sideways on the tile wall.

“Reuenthal!” he yelled.

Reuenthal ignored him.

It was lucky, Yang thought, that the train was nowhere in sight, and the platform was not very long, so there was nowhere for Reuenthal to actually escape to, unless he wanted to try to get past Yang to leave the station again. Reuenthal didn’t seem interested in escaping, though, just in ignoring Yang. He stood at the edge of the platform, looking blankly down into the dark tunnel. Yang came right up next to him. He wanted to grab Reuenthal’s arm, but didn’t.

“Where are you going?” Yang asked.

“Home, Leigh,” Reuenthal said.

“What was that all about?”

Reuenthal didn’t say anything, and didn’t turn to look at him, either.

“You should come to the reception,” Yang said. “You saw-- Mittermeyer would want you to come.”

“No.”

“Are you going to talk to him later?”

“No.”

“Then what was that all about?” Yang was somewhat exasperated at this flat refusal.

“I’m done with him,” Reuenthal said. “I have nothing more to say.”

“And that’s why you had to make a scene?”

Reuenthal stared down the track. “I release him from any responsibility towards me.”

There was a muted rumble from down the track as the train began its approach, its yellow lights illuminating the tunnel. Reuenthal stepped forward, and Yang had the fleeting worry that he was going to do something extremely stupid, but he just stood on the platform with his hands loosely behind his back and turned to Yang. “Should I expect to see you tonight?” Reuenthal asked.

Yang’s stomach twisted, and he frowned. “No, probably not.”

Reuenthal nodded once, sharply. The train pulled up and opened its doors. Yang was struck by the urge to follow him, but he resisted, and the doors shut behind Reuenthal and the train sped away, leaving Yang behind. 

Any joy or relief he had felt from the wedding itself was gone, leaving him again with a sick and guilty feeling in his stomach, even though he knew that he could have done nothing to change the situation. He hated trying to mediate between Reuenthal and Mittermeyer, and he wasn’t sure which one of them was more at fault. It wasn’t worth it, he thought, his happiness with Reuenthal, to watch this miserable scene play out, destroying years of friendship between the three of them. 

Magdalena was wrong. She thought he was worried about Reuenthal abandoning him for Mittermeyer. Perhaps he should be more worried about Reuenthal simply abandoning everyone. What had it been that Reuenthal had said to him, on the night that they graduated from the IOA?

Yang trudged back up the subway stairs, down the long street, and towards the wedding reception, a nicely decorated hall with a dance floor and tables for dinner. No one noticed when he came in, except for Magdalena, who was in the middle of talking to Bittenfeld about something.

She abandoned Bittenfeld immediately and came over to Yang, leaning on his shoulder. “So, what was that all about?”

Yang shook his head. “Nothing good,” Yang said. “But there’s nothing I can do about it, either.”

There was a little time for everyone to socialize before the bride and groom arrived, Evangeline at least needing to change out of her dress into something less restricting. Yang didn’t feel much like being social, so he let Magdalena drag him around to talk to Evangeline’s friends, who Yang didn’t know and thus didn’t have to make much conversation with. 

Through the speeches and the dinner, Yang kept turning his head to look at Mittermeyer, who seemed radiantly happy. When he caught Yang looking, he smiled broadly at him, and Yang was forced to smile back, though he was sure that his own expression gave away his misgivings. Mittermeyer didn’t seem to notice.

Yang gave only a short address, when pressured into it by his friends. He stood up at the front of the room, rubbing the back of his head and leaning awkwardly towards the microphone. “Some of you got lucky that the IOA changed its rules so that I didn’t have to give a speech at graduation, so I don’t know why you’re all telling me I should make one now.” There was a bit of laughter at that. “Mittermeyer, er, Wolf, is one of the best people I know. I don’t know if there’s a person in this galaxy who’d make a more considerate husband. I know I’ve given a lot of bad advice I’m not qualified to give over the years, so I won’t give any now to either of you now. I suppose I should just say congratulations, and I hope you both find the greatest happiness together.” 

He practically ran away from the mic after that, returning to sit with Magdalena.

Eventually, it was time for dancing. Mittermeyer and Evangeline had the first dance, of course. They looked good together. Happy. Mittermeyer knew how to dance, and he twirled her around the room to some song that Yang was sure Evangeline had chosen. 

As he watched, Yang leaned towards Magdalena. “I don’t know how you composed yourself at Ingrid’s wedding.”

She frowned. “This is completely different, and you know it.”

“Is it?”

Magdalena shook her head and took Yang’s hand. “At least you and I have each other to keep us both on our best behavior.”

Wahlen overheard this exchange, though he didn’t understand the substance of it, and looked at Yang and Magdalena with a smile. “And when can we expect to hear the news of your engagement?”

“I don’t know,” Magdalena said with a charming, if mischievous, smile. “When can I expect you to put a ring on my finger, Hank?”

“I don’t--”

She patted his arm and laughed at him, a response that seemed to satisfy Wahlen, because he smiled at her. 

“Shall we dance, Hank?” she asked, then dragged him towards the dance floor without waiting for an answer. 

They danced for a while, and Yang was glad that Magdalena was indeed on her best behavior. She made sure that neither of them crashed into anyone else. Yang kept his mind on not stepping on her, which at least temporarily made him stop staring at Mittermeyer, though he caught glimpses of him as they moved about the dance floor.

They could speak quietly, bodies pressed together, voices only audible to each other over the music.

“Are you going to tell me what was going on with Oskar?”

“What is there to say?” Yang asked.

“You said it was nothing good.”

Yang craned his neck to look at Mittermeyer. “I think that was his way of saying goodbye.”

“Stupid way to do it,” Magdalena said. Her hand was on his back, tracing up and down his spine in a kind of aimless way. “Stupid thing to do.”

“I don’t disagree.” He paused for a second. “Though it’s not as though he could come here and have a last dance.”

Magdalena pressed her forehead to Yang’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t say things like that,” she said. “You’re just being mean to me.”

“Yeah,” Yang said. “Sorry.”

“I can’t wait until we get married. Then we can get revenge on all of them for all of this.”

“We’re not getting married.”

“I know.” She laughed a little, lifting her head up to look at him. “I’m joking.”

“Good,” Yang said. 

“Do you think Eva will dance with me?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said.

“I suppose it won’t hurt me to ask. Fortune favors the bold, you know.”

“Does it?”

“You have to admit that they are a good looking couple.” 

“Did anyone say that they weren’t?”

“No, not at all.” Magdalena laughed. When the song ended, she disentangled herself from Yang, and he watched as she tapped on Eva’s shoulder. He read her lips-- “May I have the pleasure of this dance?”

Evangeline and Mittermeyer both laughed, and Evangeline took Magdalena’s hands as the next song started, something very jaunty. Mittermeyer left the dance floor and came to stand next to Yang, both of them leaning against the wall.

“How are you feeling?” Yang asked.

“Great,” Mittermeyer said. He was smiling as they watched Evangeline and Magdalena dance. Evangeline kept laughing as Magdalena made progressively sillier moves. He was again jealous of her, the things that she was allowed to do.

“That’s good,” Yang said.

“I’m glad that Reuenthal came. I saw you go-- did you talk to him?”

“Yeah.”

“I can understand why he didn’t stick around for the reception, but I wish he had,” Mittermeyer said. “I am glad he forgives me.”

Yang was silent for a little too long, which made Mittermeyer frown and ask, “What did he say to you?”

“Not very much,” Yang said.

“But he’s willing to talk to me again, right?”

Yang rubbed the back of his head. He didn’t want to spoil Mittermeyer’s mood, but he clearly already had. He couldn’t lie. “No.”

“Why not?”

“He’s done, Mittermeyer. That’s what he said.” Yang shook his head.

Mittermeyer’s face fell. “I don’t understand.”

“I think he was trying to say-- you can have this, but not the other thing,” Yang said. “I’m sorry.”

Mittermeyer took a deep breath. “Will you tell him--” He cut himself off and shook his head.

“Maybe give it time,” Yang suggested, though he didn’t know if that was a good suggestion or not.

“Yeah.” Mittermeyer tried to smile, catching Evangeline’s eye. “Yeah.”

“Don’t let this ruin your day,” Yang said. “It’s not like anything has changed.” This was bad advice, and he knew it as soon as he had said it, but Mittermeyer seemed to like it.

“You’re right,” he said firmly. “Thanks, Leigh.”

Magdalena was demonstrating to Evangeline how she could stand en pointe even without ballet shoes on, holding Evangeline’s hands for support. Yang shook his head at the display.

“Eva wanted to talk to you, by the way,” Mittermeyer said.

“Oh, what about?”

“I don’t know.” He smiled a little. “I won’t be jealous if you dance with her.”

“People all around should be more wary of inflicting my dancing on others,” Yang said. Without thinking, he added, “You won’t ever have to dance with me, so you don’t know how bad it can get.”

Mittermeyer clapped his shoulder and laughed, a real amused sound. “Maybe so.”

“I’ll have a talk with her when she’s not busy,” Yang said. “I wouldn’t want to monopolize her time, or yours, at your own wedding.”

“You’re not monopolizing me, Leigh,” Mittermeyer said. “I’m glad you came.”

“Did you think that I wouldn’t?”

Mittermeyer laughed again, but it wasn’t precisely a happy sound. “I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Yang said. He touched Mittermeyer’s arm lightly. “I meant what I said, you know.”

“What?”

“I do wish you the greatest happiness.”

“Thank you.” 

Mittermeyer looked at him with a bit of a melancholy expression, so Yang said, “I understand that you do not feel the need to wish me the same.” He smiled, trying to convey that he really didn’t mind any of Mittermeyer’s hesitation.

“When you get married, then I’ll wish you that.” He looked across at Evangeline and Magdalena, who were both laughing at something.

Yang shook his head. “Then where will we be?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know.”

Yang couldn’t bear this conversation anymore, he thought, so he smiled once again at Mittermeyer, then made as graceful of an exit as he could towards the restrooms. The hallway behind the reception area was quiet, the music a distant throb, and his footsteps were quiet on the carpeted floor. He heard familiar voices from down the hallway: Mittermeyer’s parents. Against his better judgement, Yang stopped to listen.

“...Seems like it’s going well,” his mother was saying.

“These things take time.” That was Mittermeyer’s father.

“Are you worried?”

“Less than you are.”

“Why did he have to come?” There was a twist in his mother’s voice on the word ‘he,’ which left little room for Yang to wonder who exactly they were referring to. 

“I’m surprised he stuck around for so long,” his father said. “He hasn’t been mentioned in a while.”

“Not since he visited.”

“I liked the other one better, if I had to pick,” his father said, a joking tone in his voice.

“Let’s be glad we don’t have to,” his mother said. “You aren’t worried about him, though?”

“No-- he seemed sincere to me. And if he was going to cause a problem, he would have already.”

“True.”

Yang had the horrible realization that Mittermeyer’s parents were talking about  _ him _ . He wanted to leave, but he waited another second.

“Eva seems happy,” his father said.

“He’ll be good for her.”

“I hope so. I hope it’s not...” His father’s voice faded out a little.

“You are as worried as I am.”

Yang decided that he had heard enough, and he turned and walked quietly away, not wanting Mittermeyer’s parents to know that he had overheard them. He supposed he could understand exactly what they were feeling, in a way, even if he was coming at it from the opposite direction. He shook his head. The fear that Mittermeyer was making a mistake hung heavily over too many people at this wedding.

After a few minutes, Yang made his way back into the reception. Magdalena was entertaining herself talking to whoever would listen to her. It was clear that she had missed the court life, from how much she was enjoying being social here, even at this wedding where she was the only person with a title to her name.

Evangeline came over to Yang while he was sitting by himself at his table, fiddling with his glass of wine. It wasn’t that late, but he was exhausted, and was wondering when he could leave. Still, he smiled at Evangeline as she sat down next to him. “Congratulations, Frau Mittermeyer.”

“You know, I think you’re the first one to call me that.”

“I’m shocked,” Yang said. “I’d think that it would be the first joke that everyone would make.”

“It’s a joke?”

“Maybe not. I should ask your permission to call you ‘Evangeline’ again, since you’re married now. What if your husband didn’t approve?”

She laughed a little. “I should tell him you’re trying to steal me away from him already.”

“Unfortunately, I don't think he would believe you, so it wouldn’t be that funny of a joke.”

“Well, I give you permission to call me Eva,” she said. “And I’m sure Wolf won’t mind.”

“I’m glad to hear it. How are you feeling?”

“Perfect,” she said. “I can’t believe you said that you give bad advice, since I think your advice has made me a happier woman than anything else in the world.”

“I should start charging by the word,” Yang said. “But I’m glad you’re happy.” 

His tone must have been wrong, because Evangeline said, “Was there any question that I would be?”

“No, I’m just trying to express myself, and not doing a very good job. I’m a little tired.”

“Did you have an exciting night last night?”

“Not really,” Yang said. “If you ask Bittenfeld, he’ll complain that we didn’t go to a strip club. We really did just get very drunk. He didn’t want to leave a bad impression on you the night before your wedding, I think.”

“I know, I’m just teasing you.” She smiled, a gentle expression. “Do you mind if I ask you a question? You’ve always been very honest with me.”

“Have I?”

“I should hope so.”

Yang suspected he knew exactly what Evangeline’s question was about to be, and he didn’t exactly want to answer it, but he did like Evangeline, and he didn’t want to make the situation worse. “Go ahead and ask your question,” Yang said. “Though I can’t guarantee that I’ll know the answer.”

“That was Reuenthal?” she asked, clearly trusting that Yang knew exactly what she was referring to.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m surprised you hadn’t met him before.”

“I’ve heard his name often enough,” she said, “though I suspect that there was a reason that I’ve met you and not him.”

“Mittermeyer, er, Wolf was probably just worried that Reuenthal would antagonize you. He doesn’t get along with about half the people in the world.”

“Do you know what all of that was about?”

“I can guess.”

“I know it’s Wolf’s private business,” she said with a little sigh. “And we’ve had conversations in which you won’t tell me his personal business often enough that I’m not going to bother asking you what it is.”

“Thank you,” Yang said, relieved.

“But I need to know if I should be worried,” she said after a long second. 

“No,” Yang said. “Wolf and Reuenthal had an argument. I think that was his way of saying… he’s not going to make problems for you.” 

“Should I ask Wolf about it?”

Yang rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t know. Not right now.”

“And will he tell me the truth, if I do?”

“Yes,” Yang said. “I think so.” He tilted his head back. “It’s to his credit and his detriment that he’s an honest man. He wouldn’t lie to you. And you can trust him.”

Evangeline nodded. “Thank you, Herr von Leigh.”

“If I’m calling you Eva, even though you’re married, you must still call me Hank.”

She smiled. “And address you less formally than even my husband does? What a scandal that is.”

“Someone accused me once of being, and I quote, ‘a stiff backed cadet afraid to call people by their first name.’ I think she might have had a point.”

“What is it with boys and doing that?” Evangeline asked. “I’ve never once felt the inclination to refer to my friends by their family names.”

“By necessity, I think that women have less of an attachment to their family names than men do,” Yang said. “And there are other reasons, as well, I’m sure.”

“Silly ones.”

“Perhaps.”

“Thank you for being honest with me, then, Hank,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

“I’m glad I could help, though I never really feel like I do.”

“You and Wolf both end up thinking very little of yourselves,” she said.

“Maybe you’ll be able to cure him of that.”

“I hope so,” she said with a smile. “And I hope someone cures you of it, as well.”

Yang smiled. “I am merely optimistic enough to hope that you enjoy your honeymoon.”

“I’m sure that we will. It feels unfair that we are going on vacation while you are beginning the school year.”

“I’ve been told that I cannot spend my whole life being lazy, no matter how much I wish that I could.” This made Evangeline laugh.

“Wolf and I are probably going to head out soon,” she said. “If I don’t see Maggie again before we go, please do tell her that I am very grateful for her coming.”

“I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magdalena says "just have a threesome for the love of god". Magdalena wants the terrible polycule to look like a giant circle of yang -> reuenthal -> mittermeyer -> evangeline -> magdalena -> yang . there are several problems with this (not least of which being that evangeline is straight lmao) but she is being ridiculous and just refuses to admit how ridiculous she is being, because she thinks that her own ridiculous views are the only things that help her cope with how garbage the world is.
> 
> reuenthal is having a bad time. while both he and magdalena cope by digging their heels into whatever their irrationality is, reuenthal's irrationality is unfortunately being mean, pushing people away, and hating women (not necessarily in that order). 
> 
> mittermeyer is having a weird (and also bad) time. he copes with this by pretending that if he's Just Good Enough, if he makes promises and then is forced to keep them, if he does the honest thing, he'll feel better. he will not feel better.
> 
> yang is having a godawful time. i don't think this needs elaboration
> 
> evangeline just had a guy she's never met before crash her wedding in an extremely strange way and is honestly trying to figure out if she needs to be worried that she's about to get murdered in her sleep.
> 
> it's canon that mittermeyer is the only one who's heard eisenach talk. but in this story, eisenach has known about reuenthal gay drama before yang even knew about reuenthal gay drama.
> 
> vote now on your phones about who had the worst time at this wedding / in general haha
> 
> the title of this chapter is from [my mother's favorite warren zevon song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCpYKJE6LpQ). it's hashtag ironic as it is a cheesy love song about getting married. it is not my favorite warren zevon song.
> 
> thank you to lydia and em for the beta read! original fiction @ bit.ly/shadowofheaven and bit.ly/arcadispark . I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter


	16. Profess Keen Interest in the Welfares of the State

_ August 483 IC, Odin _

Kircheis was glad to be back at school, he decided. Even though his parting with Martin had been sad, he was relieved to be getting away from his family, and he had a weird feeling of anticipation about taking Leigh’s SW class. He wondered how much different it would be, taking a real class with him, rather than just having Leigh set up individual games between him and Hilde on those few occasions that both of them had visited the Mariendorf house.

Some of this excitement and happiness to be back at school had faded by the time that Thursday, the day of the sophomore practicum, rolled around. In terms of his classmates, absence had made the heart grow fonder, and as he attended his classes, he was forced to remember that he was joining the imperial fleet, a thought that didn’t exactly please him.

Still, on Thursday, he arrived at the appointed room a few minutes early, and slid into one of the front seats at the lecture hall, looking around at his classmates. His attention was caught by the sound of an argument in the hallway outside. He had the unfortunate sensation of recognizing all of the voices involved-- a few of his more argumentative peers, and Hildegarde von Mariendorf. He stood, hurriedly, leaving all his belongings at his seat, and headed out into the hallway to resolve the dispute.

“I can’t believe you’re still here,” John Gramlich, a sturdy looking boy who hovered somewhere around tenth place in the class, was saying. He was turned towards Hilde, so he didn’t see Kircheis as he arrived. There were a couple of other students hovering around who had been speaking before, but when Kircheis appeared, some of them scattered back into the classroom. Kircheis was well known for both liking the young Mariendorf and for being the top student in the mandatory physicals, so no one particularly wanted to get in his way.

“Where else do you think I should be?” Hilde asked.

Gramlich leaned forward a little. “Uh, looks like you should be at ‘Saint Germain Ladies’ Academy.’” He was reading the little crest on Hilde’s backpack, which she had slung over her arm. She had apparently not come directly from her school, since she was dressed in an unmarked suit rather than the top half of her usual uniform.

“I have permission to come here,” she said.

“Did you take the entrance exam?”

“She would pass, if she did,” Kircheis said, making his presence known. Gramlich turned to him.

“And you would know this because…?”

Kircheis smiled. “I’m sure you’re about to find out.”

“We’re taking a test?” Hilde asked, looking suddenly slightly alarmed. “I didn’t know there was summer reading.”

Gramlich was confused. “Why would we take a test? There’s no tests in SW.”

“SW?” She looked at Kircheis. “Commander Leigh told me he was teaching Modern Military Strategy.”

“I lied,” Leigh said, appearing behind the group. “Good to see you again, Kircheis, Gramlich, Fraulein Mariendorf. I hope we’re all ready to go in and start class, instead of causing a scene in the hallway.”

“We weren’t causing a scene, sir,” Hilde said.

“Of course you weren’t. Let’s go.” He grinned at her.

“Does she really have permission to be here, sir?” Gramlich asked.

“Well, sure,” Leigh said. “Chancellor Steger doesn’t care that much.” Leigh paused, rubbing the back of his head. “Or, if he does, there’s not really very much he can do about it.”

Gramlich was nonplussed by this, but Leigh continued to usher everyone into the lecture hall, so there was little time for disagreement. As was his usual manner, Leigh situated himself on top of the desk at the front of the room, sitting cross legged. There was a non-trivial amount of muttering from the assembled students: Commander Leigh was no Captain Staden, and apparently a few students had not read their schedule closely enough to see that the professor teaching the class had changed.

“Welcome back, everybody,” Leigh said. “I’m sure the vast majority of you thought you would be free of me after taking your required history class last year, but, unfortunately for all of us, Captain Staden has decided that he no longer wishes to be a fixture of the IOA, and has left for greener pastures. I’m sure we can all continue to have a productive class without him.” He smiled awkwardly at the assembled students. “I’ve taken the liberty of reading through some of the previous game transcripts for each of you, and seeing how the class rankings stand, but that’s not exactly a substitute for getting a feel for how you all operate myself, so I’d like to get us directly into the thick of things. We’re going to play two short games today, so that everyone gets a chance to play, and everyone gets a chance to GM. Standard ruleset, except for the strict timer so we keep things moving…”

Leigh explained the first game scenario, then sent everyone off to their desks to begin. Although Kircheis didn’t know for certain, since it was supposed to be a secret, he suspected that he was playing this first game against Hilde. It was the type of thing that Leigh would do. The more interesting question was, who was the GM? It didn’t matter, he supposed.

The situation was simple, really, to facilitate quick games. Kircheis was responsible for a small armed group of ships escorting a large convoy of supply ships out towards a base on the Alliance side of the Iserlohn Corridor. The base was fully under imperial control, but the route in between the exit of the corridor and the base was a treacherous one, and that was where the game was taking place. Kircheis suspected that most of the groups playing the game would end up having the engagement right outside the system to which the supplies were headed. It was the necessary choke point, and even if he was very stealthy and lucky on his trip through the navigation lanes, he would have to show himself eventually, to get to his known destination.

Kircheis wanted to avoid that. In fact, if at all possible, he would like to avoid fighting completely. He had developed a bit of a reputation for caution in his games, which was usually fine, but he knew that Hilde would be able to take advantage of that. He wished that he could confirm that he was playing against her, but that was impossible.

Kircheis had navigable routes available to him that led him through all of the relatively close star systems. He didn’t think it was that realistic to have this information, since navigation, especially on the other side of the Iserlohn corridor, was a question that haunted every description of strategy he had ever read, but it was nice that Leigh had provided it to them for the purposes of the game.

He needed to get the ships into the system without being caught, or at least that’s what he would prefer. Kircheis was relatively certain that if things came to a head-on battle, he would be able to defeat Hilde tactically, but he did not like to commit even these imaginary forces to a battle if he could help it. Though, if he tried a strategy to avoid fighting, he would be automatically on the back foot if Hilde saw through his tricks. 

The clock was ticking, and already Kircheis had hesitated too long. He committed, typing out the commands that would divert his forces on a long and winding route through several star systems. There was no sign of Hilde anywhere, so Kircheis wondered if she was setting up a defensible position outside the base-- far enough away that the base forces couldn’t attack her, close enough that she would be able to see Kircheis’s approach and intercept. His strategy was giving her plenty of time.

In the last star system hop, Kircheis split his forces. The majority of his armed ships and the entirety of the supply convoy would be remaining behind here, while a sliver of armed ships would be proceeding to the planet, hauling behind them huge chains of asteroids, ones that would look on radar like Kircheis was bringing his whole fleet with him. He was hopeful that this trick would allow him to lure Hilde’s forces out of range, letting his real convoy sneak into the protection of the base without difficulty.

As soon as he had committed to this plan, though, Kircheis was skeptical that it would work. He suspected that Hilde would see through him immediately, but it was too late. Leigh had told him, a while ago, that he hedged his bets. Kircheis needed to move forward.

He brought his decoy ships in, and the GMs told him that he could see Hilde’s forces, or at least a contingent of them-- he wasn’t aware of how many ships she actually had at her disposal. Her ships began turning towards his, and Kircheis hurriedly gave the order to move his decoy ships out towards the edge of the system, moving around it in a huge circle, half trying to escape, half trying to move closer to the planet with his base.

Hilde’s ships followed for a second, then Kircheis cringed as they did something odd. She split her force in half, sending half to chase him and half to remain where they were, keeping out a watch. The GM must have reported to her, or she must have divined, that his ships were moving oddly, constrained as they were by their extra burden.

He desperately wanted to abandon this strategy, now that he knew he had been found out. She had more ships than he did, even with her forces split in half. She would be able to wipe out his convoy if it came close to her ships still waiting in ambush. He wasn’t in control of the ships he had left behind-- he would have to wait until they came back within communications range, acting on his pre-given orders, before he could stop them or change his strategy.

All he could do now was try to deal with the half of Hilde’s forces that were coming after him. Kircheis changed tactics. He used the navigation program on the computer to do some dirty calculations about where Hilde’s forces and his would meet, and he sent an order to the GMs that he wanted his little group of ships to accelerate to that point as quickly as possible, without decelerating. When both groups of ships came close, Kircheis ordered that his ships detach the cargo they were hauling, sending the huge rocks free-flying towards Hilde’s ships. His ships, suddenly free from their burden, could accelerate away and avoid being hit by the rocks, but Hilde’s couldn’t simultaneously avoid the asteroids and Kircheis’s guns, so even though his forces were at an extreme size disadvantage, he was in a far better position, and he inflicted severe losses on Hilde’s detached force. It wasn’t enough, though. As Kircheis pulled his forces back, he had his eyes on the game timer, watching the clock tick down until the rest of his forces were supposed to come in. They arrived right on time, and, as he predicted, the remainder of Hilde’s forces pounced. 

It became a purely tactical fight, but Kircheis was at a disadvantage, both in terms of the strength of his fleet, and the fact that he was trying to protect the convoy of supply ships. He ordered some of them to run towards the base while his armed ships kept up a rear guard, and many of them made it, but his armed ships suffered heavy losses. Kircheis couldn’t really consider it a win at all, and he exited the game feeling annoyed at himself, though he tried not to let that show on his face when he stepped outside into the hot August sunlight for the lunch break. 

He found Hilde, sitting on the grass outside, eating a sandwich. She waved at him to come over, and he sat across from her. She offered him her lunchbox, and Kircheis found that she had packed enough food for both of them. “I would let you into the dining hall, you know,” Kircheis said. “You don’t have to bring lunch for me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” she said.

“When it gets cold, we will want to eat lunch in the dining hall.” But he took her offered sandwich and cookies. “Good job in there, Fraulein.”

She laughed. “And how did you know you were playing against me?”

“It felt like you. I’m right, though?”

“Of course. Hank told me it was you.”

“Ah.” Kircheis leaned back on his elbows in the grass, tilting his head to look at the sky, puffy white clouds sliding across it gently. “I should have done better.”

“If I didn’t know it was you, and I didn’t know that you would try to be too-careful, you would have won, easily,” she said. “And you did win. You got your ships down.”

Kircheis turned to smile at her. “Do you think that Commander Leigh will consider it a win if the technical goal was met, but the losses were that heavy? Staden might have, but…” Kircheis shrugged.

“You’ll have to ask him.”

“I might.” Kircheis changed the topic. “Are you staying for the rest of the class, or do you have to go back to your, uh, school?”

“My dad arranged it so I could have the whole day. I didn’t understand why, but I guess I do now. You should have told me that he was teaching SW. I would have--”

“I don’t know how you could have practiced,” Kircheis said with a laugh.

“Done different reading, anyway.”

“He thought you would like the surprise.”

“I do, I suppose. Or, at least I’m very glad to be taking the class. I never thought I’d be able to. It’s…” She trailed off. “Nice.”

“Yeah.”

Their conversation was momentarily interrupted as Gramlich came over. He didn’t seem as combative as he did before, mainly pensive. He stood in front of Kircheis and Hilde with his hands loosely in his pockets. “I GM’d your game,” he said.

“Oh?” Hilde asked. She sat up straight and leaned forward, clearly interested in what he had to say. “What did you think?”

“I got Leigh’s message loud and clear,” he said.

“What was that?” Hilde asked.

“To lay off you.”

Hilde frowned. “He doesn’t need to--”

“That’s not what I mean,” Gramlich said. “If you can hold your own against him, then I don’t have an issue with you. That’s all.” He jerked his head at Kircheis, who was undefeated against his peers. 

“Oh, well, I have a lot of practice against Siegfried. I don’t know if I’d be able to beat anyone else.”

“But you’re going to stick around and find out, I assume.”

“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “If I can.”

He nodded a little. “Leigh is a smart man, even if he is weird.”

“Why do you say that?”

“People would resent you if you beat them before you fought him.” Again, Gramlich nodded at Kircheis. “Good to establish yourself against someone we respect.”

Kircheis smiled a little. “Thank you.”

“You should hang out with the rest of us more often,” Gramlich said to Kircheis. “Instead of disappearing on the weekends.”

“I didn’t know that anyone was looking for me,” Kircheis said.

“Well, you know,” Gramlich said with a shrug. “I’m just saying.” He seemed somewhat uncomfortable, but Kircheis had to appreciate his honesty and his willingness to slightly apologize to Hilde for their confrontation in the hallway before class. 

“Alright, I will,” Kircheis said. “You can invite me next time you go to Joseph’s.” 

Gramlich was surprised by that. “Oh. Sure.” But he smiled. “Anyway, I should go get lunch.”

“See you around,” Hilde said as Gramlich turned to go. When he had walked about ten yards down the green, he stopped and turned suddenly.

“Hey, Mariendorf! You should get a uniform, if you’re going to hang out around here,” he called to Hilde. “Looks weird if you don’t.”

She nodded solemnly. “I should, shouldn’t I?” she said to Kircheis, who shrugged.

“You should ask Commander Leigh.”

* * *

_ January 484 IC, Odin _

It would have been a stretch to say that Kircheis became friends with the rest of his classmates after that, but he was less reluctant to be social with them than he had been. There had always been mutual respect-- on Kircheis’s behalf because he tended to naturally respect people, and on the other students’ behalf because, no matter how hard the other students looked, there was nothing that Kircheis had done to merit disrespect. After all, while every other member of the class nurtured memories of being solidly and fairly beaten by Kircheis academically, in the SW practicum, or during physicals, Kircheis had never lorded it over anyone. The only flaws that people could have pointed to were his attachments to Commander Leigh and Hildegarde von Mariendorf, but now that Leigh was running the most important class in the school, and Hilde was just as good at beating people in SW games as Kircheis was, those became less areas of disdain and more areas of confusion. No one seemed quite sure what to make of the fact that Kircheis and Hilde were friends, or that Kircheis always spoke enthusiastically about Leigh, in a way that he didn’t about anything else.

Hilde did start wearing a uniform, and she wore it with such surety and pride that no one made any comments on it, at least in Kircheis’s hearing. She wasn’t exactly accepted as a member of the class-- even though SW took up an inordinate amount of everyone’s time and attention, there was no escaping the fact that however much she might want to be, Hilde was not an official student-- but the other students didn’t mind her presence, and didn’t complain when they were matched up against her during games.

This cordial acceptance was to the point that, on the day of the mandatory hunt for top students at Neue Sanssouci, when Hilde and her father “happened” to be in court that morning, everyone was fine with Hilde tagging along with the sophomores on their horse ride. She was an excellent and sturdy rider, better than most of the other students through years of practice, though she didn’t have the arm strength to control the bow very well, a fact that annoyed her. Still, she had a good time riding with the pack, and she was a cheerful sight as she laughed and urged her horse to leap at every given opportunity, clinging to the pommel with one hand while waving to the boys behind her with the other.

Life was pleasant, in an abstract sense. He still missed Martin, and he still had misgivings about being a student at the IOA, but he was kept busy enough that these feelings rarely had the occasion to become thoughts that he dwelled upon.

It was only when he returned home for the winter solstice break that he was pulled out of the odd comfort he had found there. 

He was able to see Martin only once over the entire break, as the early part of it had been spent travelling with his parents, visiting his paternal grandfather who lived several districts away. They returned home before New Year’s, and so it was at a New Year’s party that he finally got a chance to see Martin.

The party was held in a house, a squat looking but well kept place a few streets away from the tavern where Kircheis worked over the summer. The host of the party was Maria Taubert, who was Kircheis’s age and who had had something of a crush on him before he had left high school to attend the IOA, and her twin brother Josef, who had been Kircheis’s classmate. Their parents were out of town, which meant that any of Kircheis’s peers who could escape their own houses were headed here, the building’s windows lit like candles in the darkness, and a low thrum of music sounding out into the empty street.

Inside, the number of people crammed into the living room of the house seemed almost overwhelming, everyone shoulder to shoulder, making it difficult to navigate the house or find people he wanted to talk to. It was strange to be surrounded by so many people he recognized, and at one point had known well, but now felt like he belonged to a completely different world from. He made his way through the crowd, exchanging shouted greetings with people who wanted to speak to him over the throb of the music, looking for Martin. He found him in the house’s finished basement, seated on a couch, watching some movie playing on the television. Martin was the only one paying attention to it-- there were plenty of other people in the basement, but most were involved in playing or spectating an elaborate game of beer pong.

Kircheis sat on the couch next to Martin, who didn’t notice Kircheis until he did, and then broke into a wide smile. “Sieg!”

“Hey,” Kircheis said. “Glad you got here before I did-- I’m glad I don’t have to wander around by myself.”

Martin raised his cup of beer, and Kircheis knocked his against it. “You only don’t have that problem because you’re fashionably late.”

“I had to wait until my parents were asleep to sneak out,” he said.

Martin laughed. “They’re not staying up for the new year?”

“They have the good sense to go to sleep early.”

“Are you saying I lack such a thing?”

“They would say so,” Kircheis said, but he was smiling. “But I’m willing to sacrifice my good sense and my sleep in order to see you.”

“How kind of you.” Martin smiled, but looked around to make sure no one was paying attention to them. No one was, even though there were plenty of other people in the basement. Kircheis was sinking down into the overstuffed couch further every second, feeling like he could disappear inside of it. “I suppose if I knew you were going to have to sneak out, I would have suggested some other venue.”

Kircheis shrugged. “Did you think my parents would give permission for me to attend a house party?”

“You’re an adult. Anyway, they might,” he said, considering.

“Well, it’s nice to see everyone from school again anyway.”

“For you, maybe,” Martin said with a slight smile. “Familiarity breeds contempt.”

“You shouldn’t say that, since you’ll be coming to the capital next summer. I wouldn’t want you to become contemptuous of me.”

“True,” Martin said with a smile. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Yeah.”

“How has life been in the IOA?”

“Good,” Kircheis said.

“You happy there?”

“I feel like that’s some kind of trick question.”

“No, it’s not,” Martin said. His hand brushed Kircheis’s leg surreptitiously. 

“For the most part, then, yes, I am. Commander Leigh and Hilde make it pretty worthwhile. But classes are good, and the other guys aren’t so bad.”

Martin nodded. “I’m glad you’re not miserable.”

“How generous of you,” Kircheis said with a laugh.

Martin leaned back on the couch. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“How is Hilde?” Martin asked.

“She’s good,” Kircheis said. “I told you all about how she comes to Leigh’s class. Oh, I have a photo of her in uniform.” He pulled out his phone and showed the picture of a triumphant looking Hilde to Martin, who looked at it appreciatively.

“I like her,” Martin said. “I shouldn’t have been so rude to her, that time we were in the city.”

Kircheis laughed. “It’s fine. She’s always been happier with people who tell her the truth than those who don’t.”

“That’s something that I can understand.” 

Kircheis looked over at Martin, hearing the tone in his voice. “Of course.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot.”

“About?”

“That day we went to the city,” Martin said. Kircheis tilted his head, waiting for Martin to continue. “You remember Baroness Westpfale, right?”

“I could hardly forget,” Kircheis said.

“Do you remember what she said-- how Friedrich remembers his father’s mistakes?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been talking to some people,” Martin said.

“You’re being safe, I hope.”

“I’m always safe.”

“Okay.” Kircheis knew this wasn’t true, but he wasn’t going to argue with Martin about it.

“Remember--a while ago--when Prince Ludwig died?”

“Yeah.”

“There was that group of republicans who were arrested.” Kircheis nodded. “I’ve been talking…”

“You think they had nothing to do with Ludwig.”

“Yeah,” Martin said. He pushed his hair out of his face, sweating a little in the too-warm basement. “And I think Baroness Westpfale knows it.”

Kircheis raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“I mean, maybe just in the sense of court rumors,” Martin said. “She doesn’t seem like-- I mean, she doesn’t like republicans, clearly.”

“Strange that she’s friends with Leigh, I guess.”

“Is he a republican?”

“He wouldn’t ever say so. I shouldn’t speculate.”

“You’re the one talking dangerously, now.”

“I think that we can be reasonably assured that there’s no wires hidden in this basement,” Kircheis said.

“If there were, someone would have shorted them out by spilling beer on them,” Martin said with a bit of a chuckle, looking over at the exuberant beer pong players. Their shouts were drowning out most of Kircheis’s and Martin’s conversation anyway.

“True,” Kircheis said.

Martin paused for a moment. “Are you… opposed to staying in the capital over the summer?”

“I’d prefer it, if you’re going to be there,” Kircheis said. “Why?”

“Would you be willing to do me a favor?”

“Of course. What kind?” Kircheis asked.

“If you take Hilde von Mariendorf up on her offer of finding you an assistantship in Neue Sanssouci, you could see if you could find out what happened.”

Kircheis looked at him. “What good would it do?”

“Someday,” Martin said, looking around and lowering his voice, “the Goldenbaum dynasty is going to fall. When it does, we have to make sure that we remember everything right. We can’t forget.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Thank you,” Martin said. He sounded relieved.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to find much,” Kircheis admitted. “I feel like that’s not the kind of information that you just stumble upon.”

“If the baroness knows…” Martin trailed off and shrugged.

“Maybe I should just start with asking Leigh, since they’re friends.”

“Don’t,” Martin said. “Better to not have anyone know you’re looking.”

“You’re giving me safety advice now?” Kircheis asked with a smile. “I trust Leigh.” Martin narrowed his eyes, but Kircheis bumped their shoulders together companionably, distracting Martin from whatever unpleasant feeling had risen to the surface. “I’ll look around for you,” Kircheis said. “Don’t worry.”

Martin’s hand landed for a brief second on Kircheis’s thigh. “How could I worry, when you’ve never given me anything to worry about?”

Kircheis smiled. “I doubt that’s true at all.”

* * *

_ April 484 IC, Odin _

“Count Mariendorf tells me that you asked him if there were any open positions in Neue Sanssouci that you could take for the summer,” Leigh said, tilting his head to look at Kircheis, who had come to his office hours, intending to discuss his actual class work for once. He was startled by Leigh’s immediate question about something else.

“Oh, er, yes, sir, I did,” Kircheis said, taking a seat in front of Leigh’s messy desk. “Was that inappropriate of me?”

“I’m sure Fraulein Hilde suggested it in the first place,” Leigh said. “It’s fine. If it was inappropriate to ask things of Count Mariendorf, I would have crossed that line a long time ago.” He let out a little chuckle, then shook his head. “He’s a generous man, and he likes you.”

“I’m very grateful to him.”

“Yes,” Leigh said. “I’m surprised, though. Why Neue Sanssouci?”

“Several reasons, sir,” Kircheis said.

“Oh?”

“Well, it seems more beneficial than bussing tables in a tavern back home.” This made Leigh laugh. “And I’d like to stay in the capital over the summer. And, like you said, Hilde did suggest it.”

“All fair points. You’re making me look bad in comparison to you,” Leigh said.

“I’m sorry, sir.” His apology was immediate, his classic reaction to when he felt like he had wronged someone he cared about, but he was confused, and that confusion showed plainly on his face and in his voice. Leigh laughed at him.

“When I was your age, I abused Count Mariendorf’s generosity by staying at his house over the summer, eating his food and drinking his wine, doing absolutely nothing to improve myself or the world. I was the laziest I had ever been in my life, and I enjoyed it greatly. But you’re offering to work, and you’re the number one in the class. I was the mere number two.” Leigh was joking, of course.

“I see, sir,” Kircheis said, relaxing a little.

“Will you be staying with the Mariendorfs over the break?”

“No, sir, I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

“Oh? Hilde would love to have you nearby, and it would be easy to share a ride to the palace with the count.”

Kircheis shrugged. “I would feel like I was asking too much.”

“I understand. So, where will you be staying?”

Kircheis kept his voice even and looked very calmly at one of the odd trinkets on Leigh’s desk, a patinated bronze statue of someone Kircheis didn’t recognize, being used as a paperweight. “My friend Martin is going to be attending ONU, and his uncle is letting him rent an apartment from him for cheap, so he said I could stay with him for the summer.”

“Oh, excellent,” Leigh said with a genuine smile. “Glad you have someplace to go.”

“I would be able to rent somewhere,” Kircheis said, “even if Martin wasn’t here. Since I’ll get paid.”

Leigh just smiled. “I hope being a glorified assistant in the colonial affairs office is an entertaining way to spend your summer.”

“I’m hoping to make the best use of it,” Kircheis said. “It should be good to get a sense of how things operate.”

“True. Personally, it seems like it would be torture to spend that much time in the palace, but to each their own.”

“Even though the kaiser likes you, sir?”

Leigh just smiled a little. “You should be sure to pay a visit to the palace archives while you’re there.”

“I was planning on it.”

“Oh?”

Kircheis realized he had said a little too much. “Well, it just seems like it would be interesting.”

“Any particular subjects that interest you?”

Kircheis shrugged. “There are some things about Otfried’s reign that I have questions about.”

“Let me guess,” Leigh said, rubbing the back of his head. “The construction of Iserlohn Fortress?” Kircheis had not been thinking about that at all, and his surprise at its mention must have shown on his face. “No?” Leigh asked.

“I’m not disinterested,” Kircheis said. “But I didn’t know that there would be any information on it in the records that I’d be able to access.”

“Here’s a little tip: sometimes the absence of a thing provides just as much information as the thing itself.” He held up his hands, making a circle with his fingers. “Tell me, Kircheis, is the shape my hands, or the gap in between them?”

“You can’t really have one without the other,” Kircheis said hesitantly, as Leigh looked at him through his hand circle.

“Very true,” Leigh said, dropping his hands. “Sometimes, you can get a sense of the story just by lining up little pieces around the edge of it.”

“I see, sir.”

“Well, I don’t know what one could want to know about Iserlohn, anyway. That’s just an example off the top of my head. Now, looking into how things are with Phezzan, that’s a more interesting question.”

“Thinking about that a lot, are you sir?”

“It’s my job, I think,” Leigh said. “To worry about the challenges that you all will face, and prepare you for them.”

“And you think Phezzan is one of them?”

He smiled, a little grimly. “I think that, sooner or later, the balance of power is going to shift, in one direction or another. And Phezzan has a vested interest in the status quo, for so many different reasons.” He shook his head and sighed. “Well, nothing any of us can do about it. It’s not really something you can be proactive about, unless you’re the one tipping that balance of power.”

Kircheis nodded.

“I’d also say, if you’re spending a lot of time in the palace archives, you might want to see if you can get access to the other archives around. There’s the big one in the capital, and a specialized one in the Ministry of War… If you cozy up to the right librarians, you can get access to lots of places.”

“Are you speaking from experience, sir?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Leigh said with a grin. “Don’t tell anyone I’m telling you to sneak around.”

“And learn things over my summer vacation?”

“Yes, it would be against my nature to encourage my students to be anything other than as lazy as physically possible.”

“Then I shouldn’t come to bother you during your office hours, I suppose.”

“I’m being derelict in my actual teaching duties, aren’t I?” He straightened up in his seat. “You probably came to see me about something else.”

Kircheis smiled. “I just had a question about the team game last week.”

* * *

_ June 484 IC, Odin _

Kircheis’s job in the colonial affairs office did turn out to be something of a glorified secretarial position, but he did his duties with his usual quiet cheerfulness, typing out missives to send to government offices on outer worlds about minor changes to imperial policy, filing staff paperwork, reading complaints directed to the colonial affairs office and sending polite responses to those he could do nothing for and passing along those that he could. It was not difficult work, and it wasn’t particularly stimulating, but he took as much interest in it as he could. It was good, he thought, to learn how the empire functioned, especially at its periphery. Having lived on Odin all his life, Kircheis didn’t have a real sense of what life was like out in the far colonies, and he was coming to realize that it was quite a different world than the capital. 

His position was easy, so he had plenty of time and energy left to do with as he wished. He enjoyed going on runs around the vast palace estate-- there were an almost unbelievable number of gardens and shady, forested paths that he could jog along during his lunch break or after work. He also liked spending time in the palace archive, as both Leigh and Martin had suggested he do, though he had discovered very, very quickly that it was unlikely that he would find out anything useful about Prince Ludwig’s death from random trawling of documents. He needed some kind of hook, something that would get him started. 

Of course, what Kircheis enjoyed most was spending his evenings and nights in the apartment he shared with Martin. It was the happiest he had been since he was a child. They would sit out on the rickety wooden balcony of Martin’s third floor apartment and watch the sunset, drinking very cheap wine and talking about very little of any substance. When they went inside, they would close the blinds but leave the windows open, to relieve the sticky heat of the unairconditioned rooms, keeping as quiet as possible.

In the mornings, when his alarm would go off, Kircheis would lay in bed and stare up at the slowly lightening ceiling and feel like days like these might last forever. It was that kind of summer.

He didn’t really expect anything to change, and, for a while, it didn’t. He settled easily into a routine. 

One rainy Wednesday, Kircheis was staring out the windows of the office where he worked, watching droplets slide down the glass and feeling mildly disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to go walk around outdoors on his lunch break, unless he wanted to come back muddy and damp. Since he had no desire to stay in the office, he supposed he would rearrange his usual schedule and spend some time in the library, then go home directly after work. He finished the last of his morning work, then stood and stretched, fingers just about brushing the ceiling. 

The hallways of Neue Sanssouci were usually quite empty, since the palace was so large and sprawling. Kircheis took his time heading to the library, taking a path through the narrow ‘back’ hallways to one of the rear entrances. He had begged for swipe card access, so he no longer had to sign in at the front desk, which saved him a lot of hassle. As he swiped his ID and started pulling open the heavy library doors, he heard an unusual sound: the rather out of breath and silly laughter of a very young child, coming towards him at top speed. Kircheis turned to look at the source of the sound, holding the door open as he did. The child in question was probably about three years old, maybe a little younger, chubby and strawberry blond, and dressed in quite a nice little purple vest and black pants. He was clutching a torn piece of white fabric in his hands and moving at the fastest speed his little legs could carry him, giggling all the while. As Kircheis scanned the hallway for the child’s caretaker, who he assumed was around somewhere, the child darted past his legs and through the open door into the library.

Whoever the child’s minder was was nowhere in sight, and Kircheis realized he had just made a mistake, letting the kid into the library, where there were endless rows of shelves and desks a child could hid under, and no one would know that he had slipped in except for Kircheis. He gave one last glance down the hallway, not hearing the footsteps of any adult, then let the door swing shut behind him as he entered the library to look for the child. 

The sound of laughter had stopped, possibly because the boy had run out of energy. He hadn’t gone too far, though, and Kircheis found him, laying down on the floor in one of the aisles. He was wrapping the fabric scrap around his hand so tightly that it was red and puffy. Kircheis crouched down next to him.

“What’s your name, my friend?” Kircheis asked, smiling.

The boy considered him for a second. “Ewin.”

Kircheis held out his hand. Erin rolled onto his side, then struggled to sit up. He finally grabbed Kircheis’s hand, which allowed Kircheis to gently pry the fabric strip off of his wrist, letting the blood flow back into it. He absentmindedly put the cloth into his pocket.

“Where do you belong, Erin?” Kircheis asked.

Erin was far too young to understand such a question, of course, so Kircheis didn’t really expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. Erin giggled a little, then grabbed at Kircheis’s hair.

“Can I pick you up?” Kircheis asked, reaching under Erin’s arms.

“Up,” Erin said, and struggled to stand, his chubby hands trying to find support on Kircheis’s arms. Kircheis picked him up instead, and then stood, easily, if awkwardly, holding the child. Erin squirmed a little, but didn’t complain, aside from tugging on Kircheis’s hair, but Kircheis didn’t mind very much. He carried him back out to the hallway. 

He headed down the hallway the way that he had seen the young Erin run from, but when he got to an intersection, he realized that it was probably better to stay where he was for a little while, as whoever had lost the child would probably be looking for him in this general area. After all, Erin was small, and really couldn’t have come from very far away. So Kircheis leaned on a nearby windowsill, holding Erin up to the window, entertaining him by letting him watch the raindrops drip slide down the glass. Erin babbled happily, pointing out the window whenever someone walked by outside, seemingly unconcerned about being in the arms of a strange man.

Kircheis decided after a few minutes that if no one showed up to claim the boy, he would take him down to his office and see if someone could put out a memo to the staff of the palace. He wasn’t sure what else to do, really. When he had just about resolved to do this, Kircheis heard the sound of footsteps and quiet, rough breathing coming from around the corner. He took Erin away from the window, which caused the boy to make a frustrated noise, and walked towards the sound.

Down the hallway, there was a young woman in a servant’s uniform, leaning against the wall. She was red faced, as though she had been crying, and she didn’t notice Kircheis at first.

“Pardon me, ma’m,” Kircheis said. “Is everything alright?”

She looked up at him, and her face paled. “Erwin!” she exclaimed, then ran towards Kircheis. Not really knowing what to do, Kircheis held out the child, and she practically snatched him out of his arms. Erwin, since that was apparently his name, yelped, then tugged on the maid’s hat, causing her to wince as its pins ripped free of her straw blonde hair. She seemed so relieved at the reunion of herself with the child that she barely paid any attention to Kircheis for a second. When she had confirmed that Erwin was in one piece, she turned to Kircheis. 

“I’m so sorry about this, sir,” she said. She had a half pleading, half evaluating expression on her face, eyes wide and innocent, but carefully studying every movement of Kircheis’s, her hands gripping the child harder than she needed to.

“It’s fine,” Kircheis said with a smile. “Is he your son?”

“No, sir!”

“Oh, do you need help bringing him back to his parent?” Kircheis asked. He looked at her rather disheveled state. Her apron was slipping off her shoulders, her hat was now in Erwin’s triumphant hands, and her skirt was sideways, the buttons that were usually in the back slipping around her leg.. “If you want, I can take him while you get cleaned up. I have a half hour left in my lunch.”

She shook her head. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Kircheis, Siegfried Kircheis. I’m working in the colonial affairs office.”

“Herr Kircheis, it’s for the best if nobody knows that either of us were involved in anything here,” she said, hoisting the squirming Erwin higher on her hip. He tossed her hat to the ground, and started sticking his hands through the collar of her apron, trying to pry all the buttons off her blouse. The maid was ignoring this activity, staring at Kircheis’s face.

He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Is something the matter?”

“You don’t know who this is, do you?” She glanced down at the child in her arms, a not-quite tender expression on her face.

“No,” Kircheis said.

“This is Erwin Josef von Goldenbaum. If anyone finds out that I lost him, or that you found him, I’ll be in trouble, and you probably won’t be in much better of a state.”

“I see,” Kircheis said. “I won’t say anything.” She was correct that he had no interest in being seen holding the kaiser’s grandson. Still, she was out of sorts, and he couldn’t help but ask, “But are you sure everything is alright?”

“Yes,” she said. Her expression was gentler, now that she was reasonably assured that Kircheis wasn’t going to report the incident to anyone. “If you want to know what happened-- I was walking him back to his nursery from lunch, and he likes to pull on things…” She nodded to the way that Erwin was fumblingly trying to untie the knots holding up her apron. “And he managed to get my undershawl caught in the elevator.” She laughed a little bit. “Isn’t that right, Erwin?”

Erwin pulled triumphantly on the string of her apron, causing her to shift him to her other arm before he could completely undo the knot.

“He escaped while I was trying to get myself free,” she said. “I’m very grateful for you finding him. And for your discretion.” She batted her eyelashes at him, and Kircheis took a half step backwards, suddenly uncomfortable. He bent down and picked up the hat that Erwin had tossed to the ground, just as an excuse to get her to stop looking at him so intensely. He handed it to her, and she took it with a grateful smile.

“It’s not a problem,” Kircheis said. “I’m just glad it’s alright.”

“Yes, everything is fine now. But it wouldn’t be good for us to be caught standing here talking.” She laughed a little. “Come on, Erwin. Do you want to walk?”

“Yes!” he said, and she put him on the floor, holding his hand tightly as he took a few steps forward. She glanced back at Kircheis with a smile as she led the boy away. He watched them go for a second, then turned back the way he had come, returning to the library.

Although the incident had been curious, Kircheis didn’t think very much of it. It was a surprise to have met the dead Prince Ludwig’s son, but it didn’t surprise Kircheis at all that the boy lived in the palace. After all, his mother had been sent away (it wasn’t exactly clear to where, and Kircheis suspected that she might be dead), but the boy was still a member of the royal line, for better or for worse, so he needed to be looked after by someone. He mentioned the incident to Martin, who laughed about it.

“I hope that someday you won’t say that one day you held the future kaiser,” he said.

“It seems unlikely. Maybe he’ll grow up to be secretary of state, or something. His cousins I think have a better claim to the throne than he does, since their parents are still living.”

It was only later, when Martin was fooling around attempting to remove Kircheis’s pants, that the scrap of fabric that Kircheis had taken from Erwin Josef fell out of his pocket. Martin stopped what he was doing to investigate.

“You found religion today, Sieg?” he asked, holding up the cloth.

Kircheis was unprepared for the question and was most decidedly focused more on helping Martin get his pants off than he was on Martin fishing around in his pockets. He didn’t even realize Martin was distracted, so he mumbled something approaching, “Only if this is what you’re calling religion now,” and lifted his hips off the bed so that Martin could get better purchase.

“No, really, Sieg, what is this?” Martin asked.

Kircheis heard the tone in Martin’s voice, opened his eyes, and finally sat up. “What is what?”

“This,” Martin said, and held out the cloth.

“Oh, that was-- I took that from Erwin Josef. He was cutting off his circulation with it.”

“What’s the kaiser’s grandson doing with an Earth Church prayer shawl?” 

Kircheis leaned over to see what Martin was talking about. He held up the strip of white fabric. Embroidered across it in white thread, barely visible in the dim light of their bedroom, was a string of words, repeated over and over.  _ Earth is my mother. Earth in my hands. _

“Hunh,” Kircheis said. “Weird. How did you know that’s what this is?”

“One of my cousins is deep into this stuff,” Martin said. “I don’t really understand it, but I’ve seen all the prayer books, since she keeps begging me to go to meetings with her.”

“Okay, well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Erwin took it off his nanny, I think.”

Martin looked at it for a second more, then shrugged and tossed it down to the floor where their shirts were. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, and then gently pushed Kircheis back down onto the bed.

* * *

Although Kircheis paid little attention to the cloth that day, when he returned to work, his bored thoughts wandered back to it. Something about it seemed off. He didn’t think that the Earth Church had a huge population of members, and after doing some cursory research into their positions, he found it very strange that any of them would want to work in the palace. After all, their whole philosophy was in recognizing Earth (and their church) as the ultimate destined ruler of all humanity, a position antithetical to the existence of the Goldenbaum dynasty. 

It might have been nothing, but Kircheis thought he had a “hook”, or at least a subject towards which to orient his research. He sent a message to Commander Leigh a few days later.

_ Dear Commander Leigh, _

_ I know while you were researching your book, you were able to look at palace employment records. Could you direct me to someone who could give me access to those records? I’m curious about something. Also, if you know where I could find tax information about charitable donations people have made, I would be very glad to have that as well. _

_ Hope your summer is going well. _

_ Very respectfully, _

_ Siegfried Kircheis _

Leigh sent him back a plethora of information about who to talk to and where to look (surprisingly, he didn’t ask any questions about why Kircheis wanted this information), and so Kircheis got the access he needed. The Earth Church certainly didn’t publish a membership list, but Kircheis was able to track through tax information who was giving large parts of their income to either the church directly, or various shell charities that were linked back to them. He cross referenced this list with the palace staff list, going back several decades.

He was somewhat alarmed to find that a steadily increasing number of palace staff belonged to the Earth Church. Not enough to be obvious, and Kircheis suspected that they hid their religious ties fairly well, but a not-insignificant number, either. A surprising number of these staff seemed to be concentrated in the orbit of the young Erwin Josef-- his nanny, who Kircheis already knew, but then several other of his caretakers, his personal nurse, his tutor… It alarmed him.

It wasn’t that Kircheis was particularly attached to the Goldenbaum dynasty, but at least they were understandable. The Earth Church was not.

He had to wonder if the Earth Church was trying to influence someone who may be the future monarch just because there was an influence-vacuum around Erwin Josef (since he lacked parents, and, from what he could tell, his grandfather wasn’t particularly interested in him), or if there was something even more sinister at play. He had no proof, but he had a nagging fear that the Earth Church had killed Prince Ludwig, in order to create this kind of space around the child, for purposes of their own.

Although he now had this information, Kircheis wasn’t sure what to do with it. He didn’t say anything to Martin, not yet, because he didn’t want to get his hopes up about having solved the mystery of Prince Ludwig’s death. Kircheis definitely didn’t know enough to say that. He wanted to talk to Leigh about it, but decided against it.

One cool and grey day, Kircheis was going on his usual jog through one of his favorite wooded paths on the palace grounds. He had made it a little way into the first grove of trees when he heard someone coming up behind him. Since he was usually the only person on these paths, this surprised him, and so he moved to the side of the path to let the other person pass him by. When the footsteps slowed to match his pace, Kircheis turned to look to see who was there. 

The man approaching him was pale, with an owlish face, and he was wearing a fleet uniform-- a commodore.

“Siegfried Kircheis?” the commodore asked, bringing Kircheis up short.

Kircheis stopped and saluted. It felt a little odd, since he wasn’t in uniform, but it seemed like what he should do. “Yes, sir.”

The commodore smiled, a bit of a grim expression. “I was told I could find you here.”

“Did you need something, sir?” he asked.

“Need is a strong word,” the commodore said. “I would  _ like _ to have a little talk with you.”

“Of course, sir.” He was very confused, and growing a little worried. “About colonial affairs?”

The man chuckled a little. “No, Cadet. The affair I’m interested in is much more internal.”

“Oh.”

“Has Commander von Leigh ever mentioned me to you?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know who you are, sir,” Kircheis said, his blood running a little cold.

“How rude of me,” the man said, though his tone indicated he knew very well that he had not given Kircheis his name. “I’m a former superior of Leigh’s. He used to work under me in the Personnel Intelligence unit.”

“You’re Commodore Bronner, sir?”

“Correct. So, he has mentioned me.”

“Only in passing, sir.”

“Hmph, and here I thought that Leigh would have the courtesy of giving me first billing in the story of his life.” Bronner’s tone was vaguely amused. “Are you close with Commander Leigh?”

“May I ask why you would like to know, sir?”

Bronner’s smile was predatory. “I have a special interest in his success, Cadet. I’m simply curious.”

“I enjoy his class, and he has been something of a mentor to me,” Kircheis said. “That’s all.”

“Really?”

Kircheis’s heart was in his throat. “I’m not sure what you’re implying, sir. Commander Leigh has always been very professional.”

“I do love to hear the tone in someone’s voice when I’ve poked a sore subject,” Bronner said. “You think I would have reason to believe that Leigh is being unprofessional. In what way, I wonder?”

Kircheis had to say something, so he said, “I wouldn’t know, sir. I am just surprised that you’re here asking about him.”

“It’s nice of you to defend him, but, trust me, Leigh does not need your defense.”

“I see.”

“It’s really you I came here to talk about, anyway,” Bronner said.

“Sir?”

“What exactly have you been doing, with all your research?”

“Nothing, sir,” Kircheis said.

“One does not beg and plead their way into access to all the palace employee records, and get Leigh to pull strings on your behalf, out of idle curiosity,” Bronner said. “Be honest with me, Cadet. What are you trying to find out?”

Kircheis narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t see what actual harm there could be in admitting it. “I want to find out who actually killed Prince Ludwig.”

Bronner laughed, which surprised Kircheis. “Oh, now that is very funny,” Bronner said. “Did Leigh put you up to it?”

“No, sir. He said I should research Iserlohn, or Phezzan, since they’d be important to my career.”

“Then what has you so interested in Prince Ludwig?”

“It really is curiosity, sir,” Kircheis said, which wasn’t true, but he definitely wasn’t going to tell Bronner about Martin.

“You’re lying to me, Cadet,” Bronner said. “I can always tell when someone’s putting on an act.”

“I--”

“You are not the only person who can get access to personal records, you know,” Bronner said, almost casually. “And I have more of a legitimate reason to be looking at them than you do.”

Kircheis said nothing.

“Were you friends with those republicans who were arrested, perhaps? Should I report that you have been breaking the terms of your punishment, and have you sent back off to jail?”

“No, sir,” Kircheis said, face pale. “I don’t know them at all.”

“Then why do you have such an interest in exonerating them?”

“Sir, even if I were to uncover some kind of evidence that proved they were not guilty, I’m sure that it would do nothing for them,” Kircheis said.

“Answer the question, Cadet,” Bronner said.

“If you really must know, Baroness Magdalena von Westpfale made a very strange comment once, and it sparked my interest.”

“Baroness Westpfale!” Bronner laughed again. “Now what was  _ she _ saying?”

“Just that the republicans were innocent. That’s all.”

“I honestly would have loved to hear you tell me that Leigh had put you up to investigating that murder, Cadet,” Bronner said.

“Why is that, sir?”

“Because, for a little while, Commander von Leigh and Baroness Westpfale were very close to the top of the list of suspects for that murder.”

Kircheis took a step back in surprise. “Sir?”

“You should ask him about it,” Bronner said. “He’ll try to tell you that he was sleeping with the baroness that night, rather than committing a murder. I don’t know what he was actually doing, but as far as that particular story goes, I don’t believe a word of it, since she’s a homosexual, which got her banished from court, at least temporarily.” His voice was brutally dry.

“But she said she was going to marry--”

“If the two of them were going to get married, they would have done it already,” Bronner said. “Regardless, it would have given me some peace of mind to know that Leigh was still trying to clear his own name from the whole affair, by sending you after it. It would have been rather funny.”

“Should I tell you that he did?” Kircheis asked.

“No, since I know he didn’t. That’s the kind of question that he would ask, though.” He shook his head, then looked at Kircheis with his piercing stare. “So, Cadet, what secrets have you uncovered about the murder of Prince Ludwig?”

“None,” Kircheis said. “I don’t know anything about who did it.”

“You must have learned something. You were looking at very specific records.”

“Well-- I have suspicions, but no evidence.”

“Oh?”

Kircheis briefly described to Bronner what he had learned about the Earth Church.

“Interesting…” Bronner said. “And have you told anyone else about this?”

“No, sir,” Kircheis said.

Bronner nodded. “Cadet, I highly recommend that you keep your nose out of other people’s business. Generally speaking, it doesn’t end well.”

“Am I in trouble, sir?”

Bronner smiled, an evil looking expression. “You’ve put yourself on my radar, Cadet. It’s a rather unfortunate place to be.”

“I see.”

“You may be unprepared for the spotlight that is now on you.”

“May I ask a question, sir?”

“You may, though I might not answer it.”

“How did you know that I was investigating anything?”

“Oh, whenever I’m having a bad day and need to amuse myself, I read through all of Leigh’s messages.”

“You spy on him, sir?”

“He knows very well that I do it,” Bronner said. “And it’s for his own well being.”

“I don’t understand how that could be, sir.”

“You take one look at that man, who is clearly a foreigner, who appeared out of nowhere with no family connections and no birth record, who caused a very public mishap as soon as he was unleashed onto the fleet, and tell me that it’s not to his benefit to have someone looking over his shoulder, who can say that he’s probably not a spy, just a very, very strange man. I’m the best thing that ever happened to Leigh, and he would do well not to forget it.”

“I see, sir,” Kircheis said.

“And, as for  _ you _ , Cadet Kircheis, I highly recommend that you also do your best to look less suspicious.”

“Thank you for the advice, sir.” Kircheis said, trying to sound contrite and sincere. He paused for a second, then looked at Bronner. “Are you going to do anything, sir?”

“About you?”

“No, sir. About the Earth Church.”

“Do anything? What is there to do?” Bronner grinned, a little wolfishly. “After all, the culprits were already found, weren’t they, Cadet?”

Kircheis tried to stifle the frown that rose to his face. “Yes, sir,” he said finally.

“I’m glad we understand each other.”

* * *

Kircheis talked to Martin that night, though first he said that he wanted to go  _ out _ for dinner, and then after they had eaten dinner, they had taken a walk together in a nearby park. Kircheis just needed to make sure they were alone and out of their apartment.

“I think our apartment might be bugged,” Kircheis said.

“What?” Martin asked.

“Today, while I was at work, this man, Commodore Bronner, came up to me and confronted me about the research I’ve been doing,” Kircheis said. “He said he learned about it because I had sent Commander Leigh messages, and he spies on Leigh. He knew all about the stuff that happened our sophomore year.”

Martin’s face was pale in the twilight. “And you think he’s bugging our apartment?”

“He might be. I don’t know. It’s better safe than sorry.”

“Yeah,” Martin said. “But wouldn’t we already be in trouble if he was?”

“I think he’s interested in bigger things than, you know.” Kircheis felt flushed. 

“Like treason.”

“Yeah, but don’t talk so loud,” Kircheis said. “I’m just saying, we should both be careful.”

“Okay, yeah.” Martin frowned deeply. “Did he confront you because you found something?”

“Maybe?” Kircheis said. He debated for a second if he should tell Martin, since Bronner had heavily implied that he shouldn’t tell anyone anything, and then decided that he would rather have Martin know. So he quickly spoke about the evidence he had found about the Earth Church.

Martin nodded along. “That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“If their goal really is to get Earth to be the center of the universe again, then getting rid of the Goldenbaums isn’t a bad place to start,” Martin murmured. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Don’t tell anyone else,” Kircheis said. “Besides, I don’t really have much proof.”

“I won’t,” Martin said.

“Should I ask Leigh about all of this?”

“Yeah, probably. At least about the man who visited you.”

Kircheis nodded. “I don’t know what I should do about this.”

Martin stared across the park, watching the trees as they bent in the breeze that was stirring up. “You? I don’t know if you have to do anything about it. Maybe you just have to wait and see what happens.”

Kircheis looked at Martin. “You think something is going to happen?”

Martin shrugged, and there was an odd tone in his voice. “I don’t know if the Earth Church will keep their status quo for long. Now that someone has seen what they’re doing.”

“Yeah,” Kircheis said. “You’re right.”

Martin smiled. “I’m always right.”

* * *

_ August 484 IC, Odin _

Kircheis waited until he returned to school to confront Leigh, although the desire to do so felt like it was eating him up for the rest of the summer. He found Leigh at the very end of his office hours on the first day of classes, though Kircheis had not had Leigh’s class that day. He waited outside his office, and when Leigh came out and locked the door, without really looking at Kircheis, said, “Did you have a good summer, Cadet Kircheis?”

“Can we talk, sir?”

“Certainly,” Leigh said. “Let’s take a little walk, shall we?” Did he know his office was bugged? Or was he offering Kircheis the security of speaking elsewhere, regardless of whether he thought the office was bugged or not?

“Yes, sir.”

They exited the building together, and walked silently off campus, towards the nearby Eaglehead Park. When they were far enough away from all other people, Kircheis, with his hands in his pockets, asked, “Did you kill Prince Ludwig, sir?”

Leigh let out a little laugh. “No, Kircheis, I did not.” He sounded sincere, but rather unhappy.

“Commodore Bronner suspects that you did, though,” Kircheis said.

“No, he doesn’t,” Leigh said. “Not really. Not anymore.”

“Why did he think that?”

“Kircheis, it’s not really a pleasant story.”

“The commodore told me about why Baroness Westpfale was banished from court.”

“Did he tell you that Baroness Westpfale and I were with Ingrid von Goldenbaum, Prince Ludwig’s wife, on the night that he died?”

“No, sir.”

“We were.”

“Oh.”

“Are you unhappy that I didn’t tell you this before?”

“It’s not my business,” Kircheis said. “I’m sorry that I accidentally found out.”

“It wasn’t so much of an accident,” Leigh said. His voice was wry. “Bronner provided me with information about you, as well.”

“Oh.”

“I think you can trust me not to go divulging your secrets, Kircheis.” Leigh was smiling. “And I hope that I can trust you to do the same.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

“Do you know who killed Prince Ludwig?” Kircheis asked. “Do you know about the Earth Church?”

A shadow passed over Leigh’s expression. “Kircheis,” he began, then stopped and collected himself. “It’s just like I said before. Everyone has pieces of the story, and everyone has tried to line up their pieces of the story into a shape that they think is true. There’s the shape that the public can see, there’s the part that Commodore Bronner can see, there’s the part that you can see.” He pointed at Kircheis. “There’s the part that the kaiser sees, and all the people who are giving him information.”

Leigh paused for a second. “I’ll tell you who the kaiser thinks killed Prince Ludwig.”

“Who?”

“Either Duke Braunschweig, or Marquis Littenheim, or Marquise Benemunde. He believes one of the three of them paid for someone to kill the prince, so that their own child could be kaiser one day.”

“Is that true?”

“It’s true for the kaiser.”

“What does that mean?”

“And what’s true for the public is that it was republicans. And what’s perhaps true for you is that the Earth Church killed the prince for their own reasons. It’s all the shapes of the stories that we tell ourselves, with the information that we have.”

“But only one of those things is really true.”

Leigh closed his eyes and tilted his head back to the sky. “The only person who knows what really happened in the last moments of Prince Ludwig’s life is the person who stabbed him to death in his bedroom.” He sighed a little bit. “A friend of mine once told me that I shouldn’t worry so much about the injustices of the past, because there’s nothing that anybody can do to right them. Everyone who was ever hurt is going to stay hurt, everyone who died is going to stay dead. All we can do is use what we have-- the stories we have, the resources we have, the power we have-- to build the future, and maybe stop new injustices.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Finding out who killed Prince Ludwig won’t bring him back to life, and I don’t think you’ll ever be able to put enough pieces together to really answer the question to your own satisfaction.”

“But don’t you want to know?”

“I know as much as I need to,” Leigh said. He shook his head. “And I want to be free of the whole thing.” 

“I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Kircheis said.

“It’s fine,” Leigh replied, sounding a little bit better. He put his hand briefly on Kircheis’s shoulder. “You know, maybe I’m telling you to be a bad historian, by telling you to stop digging. But I don’t really think there’s anything in there worth finding.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leigh smiled and nodded. 

It was only later, when thinking over the conversation, that Kircheis realized that Leigh had avoided answering any of his questions directly at all, and the thought put a seed of discomfort in Kircheis’s heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to gallop through time here a little bit lol. This chapter covers an entire year. 
> 
> Earth church is up to its old shenanigans, what else is new?
> 
> Kircheis definitely should not have told Martin anything because Martin cannot be trusted to not do things with the information he now has.
> 
> Also, Kircheis now trusts Yang less, which is pretty unfortunate. Bronner just had to go stick his nose into everybody's business. Yang has a huge vested interest in not letting anybody find out what he knows, though, so he has to try to... obfuscate the issue, if not outright lie to Kircheis, for his own safety. He feels pretty bad about the whole thing tbh
> 
> Anyway! sorry this chapter took so long to write. I think next chapter might be a side story? (don't hold me to that b/c I might change my mind) but keep an eye out for that. we'll be back here to finish out this part, but I want to write a reuenthal and mittermeyer on capche-lanka side story, so that might be the next thing, since it's that time.
> 
> Chapter title is from a mountain goats song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YpcwNIfwno
> 
> Thank you to lydia and em for the beta read! original fiction @ bit.ly/arcadispark and bit.ly/shadowofheaven . I'm @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter


	17. As Inescapable as the Divine Right of Kings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IF YOU DID NOT READ  Whatever It Takes To Keep the Body Warm  YOU SHOULD GO READ THAT BEFORE READING THIS CHAPTER.
> 
> Also, please note the timeskip which occurs in this chapter.

_ November 484 IC, Odin _

Kircheis was, generally speaking, good at minding his own business. He didn’t have any interest in gossiping about why Commander Leigh had shown up to class several minutes late, looking extraordinarily flustered. In the chair beside him, Hilde was similarly willing to forgive, mainly because she was excited to just get started with class. Kircheis could hear snickers from some of his classmates, though.

Leigh did his best to get class started normally, though Kircheis could see that he was very, very distracted. The lecture portion of the class ended quickly, and Kircheis, while playing out a rather interesting match, tried to put whatever the matter was out of his mind. The match was primarily interesting because Kircheis saw a very easy path to victory, a suspiciously easy one, and he took it after a moment of deliberation. His opponent had forgotten, or neglected, to protect his supply line, so Kircheis essentially starved him out and won the game before the class even broke for lunch. 

Because he always had lunch with Hilde, who was still playing her game, Kircheis waited for her inside the warm building. There had been a major snowstorm the night before, though roads had been plowed enough that there was no reason to cancel classes, so sitting outside was out of the question, unfortunately. Kircheis wandered through the halls of the building, looking for an empty classroom or quiet alcove that he could take a seat and do some studying for upcoming finals in. As he was doing so, he heard Leigh’s voice, talking to someone whose voice Kircheis vaguely recognized.

“I really don’t know why you need to know,” Leigh said.

“Curiosity, mostly,” the other man said.

Leigh sighed. “I was celebrating Commander Reuenthal’s promotion. Getting drinks. That’s all.”

“I see. And you just happened to walk past the fire.”

“No, Reuenthal wanted to go see it.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know why you’re surprised by that. It’s not every day that you see a building go up in flames.”

“Did you know that most arsonists are homosexuals?” 

“That seems irrelevant to the conversation, even if it were true, which I somehow doubt,” Leigh said, voice dry. “Don’t you have subordinates in the PI unit to go antagonize?” Kircheis remembered where he had heard the voice before: this was Commodore Bronner.

“I’m taking an early lunch,” Bronner said. “Thought I’d stop by and have a little chat.”

“Do you really think that if I knew anything about the fire, I would have directly asked you about it?”

“Leigh, you’re not the act I’ve come here to see, though you do always manage to entertain me,” Bronner said. “I’m looking for one of your cadets.”

There was a tense moment of silence, and Kircheis thought about creeping away from the conversation, but remained.

Leigh was resigned when he spoke again. “Which one?”

“I think you know very well which one.”

“There’s an off-chance you’re here to interrogate somebody else,” Leigh said. “But regardless, you’re out of luck. He finished his game about ten minutes ago. I’m not sure where he went.”

“How convenient.”

Leigh snorted with derision. “Commodore, it’s not like I engineered him winning his game early in some sort of stunning act of foresight. You’ll have to catch him next week, if you want to steal him out of my class.”

Kircheis tensed up a little. Leigh was clearly trying to protect him from Bronner, because Leigh was well aware that Kircheis would be waiting for Hilde to go eat lunch. But he had no idea what Leigh was trying to protect him from, and he worried that if Leigh did push too hard, Bronner might interpret that the wrong way. 

Kircheis decided that he would rescue Leigh from himself. He had no idea what Bronner wanted, so he didn’t think there was any harm in speaking to him.

He stepped out around the corner that he had been behind. “Commander Leigh,” Kircheis said with a smile. “Are you busy?”

Leigh’s face fell a little bit, then he shrugged. Bronner looked at Kircheis appraisingly. “He’s not busy,” Bronner said. “But it’s such a nice surprise to run into you here, Cadet. I was just looking for you.”

“Were you, sir?” Kircheis asked, even though he knew very well that this was the case. Bronner probably realized that he had been eavesdropping, though.

“Yes, I was. Is whatever you have to say to Leigh urgent? I only have a few minutes before I have to run.”

“No, sir,” Kircheis said. “I can find you during office hours.”

“Yes, er, of course,” Leigh said, looking about as flustered as he had when he came in late to class.

“You can go,” Bronner said, dismissing Leigh, who seemed about to protest. Leigh gave Kircheis a sad glance, and Kircheis just shrugged and smiled a little. Leigh headed off down the hallway, but Kircheis had to think that he would be listening.

Bronner seemed to think the same, because he gestured for Kircheis to follow him into a nearby empty classroom.

“Was there something you needed, sir?” Kircheis asked.

Bronner sat on the back of one of the lecture hall’s chairs, pushing his glasses up his nose and looking at Kircheis for a second. “How much of my conversation with Leigh did you hear? And don’t tell me none of it, because I won’t believe you.”

“You were telling him that arsonists were homosexuals, sir, when I walked by.”

Bronner’s smile was thin and slightly menacing. “Oh, perfect.”

“Sir?”

“I just won’t have to repeat that unsavory fact to you, if you already knew it.”

“Commander Leigh didn’t—“

“Don’t worry about anything Commander Leigh says. I’d like to talk about you.”

“Me, sir?”

“Have you been doing any more research into the Earth Church lately?”

“No, sir. I have been very busy with school. And I believe you told me to keep out of it.”

“Hm, well, people often don’t listen to me when I tell them not to dig into things. It’s rather unfortunate.”

“I really haven’t been, sir.”

“No, I believe you,” Bronner said, though his flat tone seemed to indicate that he didn’t really, or at least he wanted Kircheis to think that he didn’t. Kircheis’s eyes narrowed, and Bronner’s lips twitched up in a tiny smile. “Where were you last night?”

“Last night?” Kircheis asked, surprised. “In my dorm room.Why?”

“Curiosity, mostly.”

“It was really too snowy to go anywhere,” Kircheis said. 

“So, you weren’t anywhere near the capital.”

“No, sir.” Kircheis wanted Bronner to get to whatever point he wanted to make, but Bronner seemed happy to draw this conversation out. Kircheis tried not to feel uncomfortable, because he suspected— knew, really— that Bronner liked to get that kind of reaction out of people. He had said it himself.

“Are you aware that last night, the headquarters of the Earth Church here in the capital burnt down?”

Kircheis was startled, taking half a step backwards. “No, sir, I was not aware.”

“It was.” Bronner seemed almost bored. “I was just wondering, Cadet Kircheis, if you knew anything about that?”

“No, sir,” Kircheis said, rather emphatically. 

“I see.”

Kircheis couldn’t help but ask, “You’re certain it wasn’t an accidental fire?”

“Accidental fires don’t tend to spontaneously start on several corners of a building at once.”

“Were there any casualties?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Kircheis said.

“Yes. It seems almost intentional that there weren’t. Since the headquarters is a primarily administrative building, there wouldn’t have been anyone there at night, especially not at night during a snowstorm as bad as last night’s.”

“You think it was a humanitarian firestarter?” Kircheis asked, unintentionally amused by the concept.

“It’s a possibility,” Bronner said. “One of many.”

Kircheis nodded. “Insurance fraud?”

“The church will get some compensation, but you don’t think they were in arrears enough to require that kind of drastic action, do you?”

“Er, no sir.”

“Leigh says you’re smart: give me a couple other reasons.”

“You started off wanting to interrogate me, and now you’re quizzing me, sir?”

“Well, it’s all the same. Come on.”

“They could be doing it to hide evidence of something.”

“It’s funny to me that your mind immediately jumps to the church having burned down their own building. I wonder why that is,” Bronner said. “Another?”

“Well, if they did it to themselves, they would know when the building was going to be clear, and they probably wouldn’t want to hurt their own members.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Bronner said.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“If they really wanted to cover up their tracks, they might want somebody to die in the fire, so that they come out looking much more like victims and less like suspects.” 

Kircheis blanched a little bit.

“Horrible, isn’t it?” Bronner said, voice completely dry. 

“I’m grateful that it didn’t happen that way,” Kircheis said after a second.

“Yes,” Bronner said. “But you understand that sometimes, people are sacrificed to create the right kind of narrative.”

Kircheis tensed up a little. “I’m not sure what you’re implying, sir.”

“Only that many people find that just as distasteful as you seem to,” Bronner said lightly. “And they might decide that they want to prove a point about that, but without stooping down to that level.”

“The humanitarian arsonists.”

“Yes,” Bronner said. “You understand.”

“Maybe,” Kircheis said. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Just to make sure that you are not getting yourself involved in any, shall we say, humanitarian efforts.”

“Is it really that bad to be a humanitarian, sir?”

“For you? In this circumstance? Absolutely. Let’s not forget who and what we are, Cadet.”

“Yes, sir,” Kircheis said.

“Good. You play the role that’s been given to you, and don’t try to deviate from the script, and we’ll have no problems.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bronner nodded. “And if you do happen to hear anything, I would appreciate it if you let me know.”

“I don’t think I will hear anything, sir.”

“Never say never, Cadet.”

Kircheis was silent, and Bronner stared at him briefly.

“It would be to your benefit if you did tell me,” Bronner said. “Anything that you learn.”

“And what would you do with that information?” Kircheis asked.

“That depends entirely on what the information is,” Bronner said. “Though, if it’s any comfort to you, I wasn’t lying when I said I was interested out of personal curiosity.” His smile was sharp. “The crown, and all of His Majesty’s servants, take a great deal less interest in a petty feud that burns down a church than they would an attack on the crown itself.”

“I see,” Kircheis said. He wasn’t going to tell Bronner anything, he resolved, even if he did learn anything, which he hoped that he wasn’t about to. Bronner was almost certainly trying to lead him into something here, a false sense of security, perhaps. 

“I’m very glad that we understand each other,” Bronner said. He stood from his perch. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, Cadet.”

“Yes, sir,” Kircheis said. Bronner walked past him and out the door, leaving Kircheis alone in the classroom to think about what had just happened.

* * *

That Friday night, Kircheis took the train into the capital and walked down the slushy streets towards Martin’s apartment. He made a detour, a small one, to the site of the former Earth Church headquarters. There wasn’t much left of it: the building was a completely empty shell, and the walls themselves had collapsed in places. The whole site was fenced off to stop people from wandering in and getting crushed by debris, so Kircheis hooked his fingers through the cold wires of the chain link fence and just stared at it for a while. 

It was a miserable looking sight.

He wasn’t getting anything out of this activity, though, so when a gust of wind blew past, making ripples in the filthy, soot-filled puddles on the ground in front of the ruined building, and rattling the fence, Kircheis let go and walked away, glancing back over his shoulder at it a couple times.

When he arrived at Martin’s apartment, warm and familiar, he didn’t take off his shoes or coat. Martin looked the same as he always did, standing on his socked tiptoes to kiss Kircheis hello. His long hair was held up out of his face with a pen that he had used to gather it into a messy bun.

“I’m glad you could come over,” Martin said, trying to tug off Kircheis’s jacket. “How has your week been?”

“Fine,” Kircheis said, putting his hand on Martin’s to stop him. “I was wondering if we could go out to eat? I’m starving.”

“You didn’t want me to cook? I just went grocery shopping.”

“I’ll pay for dinner, but I would like to go out,” he said, stressing the last word.

Martin raised an eyebrow, and Kircheis nodded. “That hungry, hunh?”

“Yeah,” Kircheis said.

“Alright, let me just— I have to send an assignment to my professor. One second.”

“Sure.” Kircheis leaned in the doorway, watching as Martin typed a few things on his computer at the kitchen table, then slapped it shut and gathered up his own coat and shoes.

“Where do you want to eat?” Martin asked.

“I don’t care,” Kircheis said. He was feeling rather odd and worried as he looked at Martin, but Martin seemed oblivious to Kircheis’s mood.

“Odin’s Finest, then,” Martin said, indicating a diner that they frequented occasionally.

“Sure.”

They walked out of the apartment together. Because the weather was poor and the sun was setting, the streets were fairly empty. Martin walked close by Kircheis’s shoulder, and spoke in low tones.

“What did you need to talk to me about that requires leaving the house?”

“Did you hear that the Earth Church headquarters burned down?”

“I could see it from my window last night,” Martin said. “Why?” His tone was light, in a way that Kircheis had grown accustomed to, when Martin wasn’t quite saying something.

“I had a visitor come and find me at school today,” Kircheis said. “Commodore Bronner again.”

Martin took an appreciatively sharp breath. “What did he want?”

“To know if I knew anything about it,” Kircheis said. “Since I was researching the Earth Church last summer.”

“Why would he think that you would have anything to do with it?”

“He indicated to me that he thought that republicans had done it,” Kircheis said. “As revenge.”

“Do you think that’s plausible?” Martin asked. His tone was still light.

Kircheis looked down at the ground as they walked, then turned his head slightly to meet Martin’s eyes. “He wanted me to report to him if I heard anything,” Kircheis said after a second of silence. 

“Oh,” Martin said. He sounded a little sullen, now, and scuffed the ground as they walked.

Kircheis tried to make his voice as firm as possible. “I would like to be able to ask you if you betrayed my trust by telling people about what I found, but I can’t. I don’t want to know anything, Martin.”

“I—“ Martin began, sounding unhappy.

“Don’t tell me  _ anything _ ,” Kircheis said. “Do you understand?”

“But I—“

“Martin!” 

Martin stopped.

“If you tell me it wasn’t you, and I believe you, that puts someone else in danger. If you tell me it wasn’t you and I don’t believe you, that puts you and your friends in danger. You’re already a suspect. I don’t want to make you more of one.”

“You wouldn’t tell him anything.”

“I can’t if I don’t know anything,” Kircheis said. He looked away. “There’s plenty of people who have cracked under torture. And they could threaten me with a lot before I even got to that point.”

“If it was that serious, I would have been arrested already,” Martin said. “Or you would have. Or…” He trailed off.

“Bronner is testing me,” Kircheis said. “He might want me to be an informant later. I need to not know anything, so that I fail his test for being useful, and pass his test for not being suspicious. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if it’s possible.” With this realization, uttered aloud, Kircheis felt the first stirrings of despair, like he hadn’t felt since he had briefly been in prison and dragged before a judge in a secret court. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

They walked in silence for a little while, until they reached the restaurant. Dinner was a slightly uncomfortable affair. Martin was frowning deeply, and looking out the window and around the room as though he was checking to see if there was someone watching them. Kircheis poked at his food, not having much of an appetite. They didn’t talk about much, just a few mindless back and forths about what Martin was studying. Kircheis didn’t know enough about dead languages to really hold up his end of the conversation, and he didn’t have the heart to feel enthusiastic about trying, either.

It was very dark and very cold when they walked out of the restaurant. The temperature felt like it had dropped precipitously over the hour that they had been inside, and where there had been slush on the sidewalk, there was now slick, invisible ice. Martin took a few incautious steps and his right leg skidded out from under him, 

Kircheis was able to grab him underneath his arms before he fell to the ground, and he waited just a fraction of a second longer than necessary, letting Martin rest in his arms, before lifting him back up so that he could stand on his own two feet. 

“You okay?” Kircheis asked.

“Yeah,” Martin said. “Thanks.” 

Kircheis just gave him a smile.

When they had walked a little ways, Kircheis stopped, looking down the street to where the train station was. “Should I just go back to the IOA?” he asked.

“No,” Martin said. “Don’t.”

Kircheis still hesitated for a second. “I have physicals in the morning.”

“You can be back before then. Or you can skip them.”

“I can’t skip them,” Kircheis said. He bit his lip.

“Do you trust me?” Martin asked suddenly, perhaps getting to the crux of the issue, right there on the empty street.

“I love you,” Kircheis said.

“That’s not the same.”

“I don’t trust myself,” Kircheis said after a moment.

“But me,” Martin insisted. “Do you trust me?”

“I don’t know,” Kircheis said. “I don’t— I trust that you want to do the right thing, but…” He shrugged, slightly miserable. “I think that means that you shouldn’t trust me. Me being in your world— it puts you in danger. And I don’t want that.”

“I trust you,” Martin said.

“Why?” Kircheis asked. “I think I might be your enemy. Bronner wants me to be a spy.”

“You’re always there to catch me when I fall,” Martin said. He put his hand on Kircheis’s arm. “We don’t have to talk about any of it, if you don’t want me to. Come on.” He tugged on Kircheis’s sleeve a little, but still Kircheis hesitated.

“Martin…”

“I trust you to do the right thing, too,” Martin said. “So I don’t think we could ever be enemies. You shouldn’t worry so much.”

Kircheis followed Martin, then, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. 

The next day, after he returned to the IOA for physicals, he laid on his own bed and stared, first up at the ceiling, then at the picture of Reinhard and Annerose on his desk, feeling more alone than he ever had in his life.

* * *

  
  


_ February 486 IC, Odin _

Kircheis was lingering outside Commander Leigh’s office door, a datastick with all the postmortems that he and Hilde had graded in his hand. He didn’t want to knock, because he could clearly hear people speaking inside. Although it felt rude to eavesdrop, he also didn’t want to walk away, because he really did need to give the graded assignments to Leigh.

“Are you almost ready to go?” the person who was not Leigh was saying.

“Patience is a virtue,” Leigh said. “I need to finish putting these grades in.”

There was a deep sigh from the other man, and the sound of shuffling papers and shifting furniture. “I should have just met you at the restaurant, instead of coming all the way here.”

“Probably,” Leigh said mildly. “Do you know when Mittermeyer is getting back, by the way?”

“Probably not for a few more days. He was further out than I was, and I think he retreated after I did, as well.”

“Mm,” Leigh said. “But he’s doing well?”

“I spoke with him yesterday.”

“Good.”

“He’ll make rear admiral with this.”

“I’m sure you will, too.”

There was a dark chuckle from the other man. “I wouldn’t presume so.”

“Why not? It seems to me like you had a tactical victory, all things considered. Destroyed the target, and more Alliance ships than ships that you had even under your command, and you only lost, what, three?” Although Leigh was praising the other man, his tone was carefully neutral.

“Five.”

“Ah.” There was a moment of silence. “Pointless,” Leigh said after a moment, and there was a melancholy note in his voice.

“You know I don’t disagree with you.”

“I know. You said as much.” Furniture creaked again. “So, why don’t you think you’ll be promoted? Retreating too early?”

“No.” Again, the dark chuckle. “You know, I was shown up by a cadet.”

“What?”

“I thought you kept up with the news off Phezzan.”

“Maggie told me to stop, because it makes me too depressed.”

The other man snorted. “And you listened to her?”

“No, I’ve just been preoccupied with other things the past week or so. This was in the news, though?” A pause. “Well, either tell me about it or don’t— I’m not going to look it up right this second.”

“I thought that your friend Bronner might not waste any opportunity to tell you about my many and varied failings.”

“I think he’s had to lay off you since you’re the same rank now. In preparation for when you outstrip him.”

“I got the distinct impression that he’s just as eager to criticize his superiors as he is his inferiors.”

“Oh, wait, I know why he’s not going after you,” Leigh said, sounding suddenly cheerful.

“Enlighten me.”

“You’re the same rank, so if he slanders you enough, you’d probably try to duel him. He has to wait until you’re a rear admiral before he starts privately denouncing you as a homosexual again.”

The other man snorted. “Cowardly behavior.”

“Eh, pragmatic. He’d lose if he fought you.”

“Is he a noble?”

“No. Or, at least there’s no ‘von’ in his name.”

“Too bad.”

“I’m sure he’s already thought of that,” Leigh said. “Don’t duel him. It would look bad.”

“If he insults me to my face, I’ll just punch him.”

“Yes, and that’s why he won’t insult you to your face. Also, don’t punch him either. It would look even worse.”

“Fine.”

“So, are you going to tell me how a cadet somehow got the better of you?”

“Sure. But I’m distracting you from entering grades.”

It was Leigh who laughed this time. “Oskar, come on.”

“Apparently, two cadets who were on a ship that we destroyed managed to make it into an escape capsule, steer their way to the base, get inside, kill a lieutenant and stuff an enlisted man into a closet, steal their clothes, and wander freely around both the base and every ship that was docked. Including the Ostberlin,” the other man, Oskar, said.

Leigh laughed. “Did your security team get overconfident about their control of the base?”

“There was apparently some difficulty in gaining control of the base’s security system, which went unreported to me. The people responsible for  _ that _ oversight have been reprimanded.”

“And then what happened? I’m dying to know.”

“Apparently, the two cadets hid on board one of my ships, the Falke, for a few days, then used various improvised weapons to free the POWs I had taken, and commandeer the ship.”

Leigh laughed. “Impressive.”

“You have any cadets you think could do that?”

“Oh, one. And maybe Hilde.”

“You have a high opinion of the little Mariirendorf.”

“I can’t help it,” Leigh said. “She’s very talented.”

“And what is she going to do with that talent?”

“Probably not commandeer any ships,” Leigh said with a bit of a sigh. “You said they got onto the Ostberlin?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because I spoke with one of them. Right after I got done talking to you, actually. I’m sure he was eavesdropping on our conversation.”

“Really! How rude of him.” Kircheis, on the other side of the door, flushed a little, since he was eavesdropping here.

The other man’s voice had a peculiar tone in it. “He should have killed me then. He had a sidearm, and I wasn’t prepared for a fight. He would have been able to shoot me.”

“I’m glad he didn’t.”

“Mmm.”

“What was he like?”

There was a momentary pause. “Well, you should see the pictures of him.”

“Oh?”

“He’s ex-Imperial,” Oskar said after a second. “Apparently left when he was ten, along with his sister, who’s a lieutenant commander in the rebel fleet.”

“I can’t help but feel some companionship with expats, even if they are in the other direction,” Leigh said. Oskar laughed. 

“Anyway, he spoke Imperial flawlessly, of course, and even used his real name, when he spoke to me.”

“I assume you remember it?”

“I can hardly forget. I’ll probably have a grudge against him until the day one of us dies. Reinhard von Müsel.” 

It was at this point that Kircheis dropped the data stick he was holding, and it clattered to the floor, loudly.

The conversation inside paused. “If you’ll forgive me,” Oskar said, “I’m a little sensitive to the concept of eavesdroppers at the moment.”

“Of course,” Leigh said.

Kircheis should have run, but instead he was frozen in the act of picking up the dropped data stick, his face hot and ashamed for overhearing the whole conversation. The door swung open, and Kircheis stood quickly, looking into the annoyed face of a commodore. Now that he was seeing him, Kircheis recognized this man as Commodore Reuenthal, whom he had briefly spoken with over the video call several weeks ago.

Leigh didn’t look up from his computer. “Do we have an eavesdropper, Oskar?”

“Yes.”

Leigh looked up. “Oh, Kircheis, you could have knocked, you know.”

“I’m sorry, sirs, I just didn’t want to interrupt.”

“It’s fine,” Leigh said.

Reuenthal pursed his lips. “Is it?”

“You’re getting a bad impression of my favorite cadet,” Leigh said, which made Kircheis flush even more. “You should know that there’s tactical value in eavesdropping, and we’re as guilty of bad opsec as he is of listening.”

“I’m not one of your cadets, Leigh,” Reuenthal said, tone very annoyed at this point.

Leigh picked up the ugly yellow mug that always sat on his desk and took a sip from it to hide his smile. “Of course not. My apologies, Commodore.”

Reuenthal just sighed and turned to Kircheis. “Was there something you wanted?”

Kircheis held out the data stick. “Fraulein Mariendorf and I finished our grading, sir.”

“Oh, excellent, thank you.” Leigh took the datastick and dropped it into the top drawer of his desk, where Kircheis felt that it immediately vanished into the mess of garbage and random other objects. “You have a look on your face that indicates that there’s something else that you wanted to talk to me about.”

“I don’t want to, er, interrupt,” Kircheis said. “I really am sorry, sir. I’ll come to your office hours tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

“Oh, of course.” Leigh smiled pleasantly. 

Kircheis walked out, feeling the eyes of Commodore Reuenthal on him the entire way down the hallway. He could hear Leigh say, “You said there were two cadets, though? Who was the other one?” But Kircheis was by then too far away to hear whatever Reuenthal’s response was.

He practically ran back to his dorm, dashing through snow drifts to cut across the green, and when he got back to his room, he lay on his bed as though his strings had been cut, staring at the picture of Reinhard and Annerose. He picked it up, as though it could reveal something to him.

There couldn’t possibly be more than one Reinhard von Müsel, with an older sister, who fled the Empire when he was ten, could there be? Kircheis was sure that there wasn’t. His heart was pounding in his chest.

The idea that Reinhard had been listening in to the brief conversation that he had participated in, with Leigh and Reuenthal… Kircheis couldn’t quite think straight. To think that he had been that close to Reinhard, after all these years.

Kircheis was almost afraid to look up the news off of Phezzan. There were several Phezzani news outlets that operated satellite stations on Odin, and Kircheis pulled up their websites, looking around for any information about Reinhard, or Commodore Reuenthal and the latest operations in the Iserlohn corridor. There was, surprisingly, very little. Certainly nothing about Reinhard, and only brief descriptions of various victories that the imperial fleet had had during the engagements.

Kircheis frowned. He didn’t think that Commodore Reuenthal had any reason to lie about this being in the news, but Kircheis wasn’t seeing it, at least in the news that he had access to. All of these news reports were written for an imperial audience, anyway— they were being sent to Odin, and they were written in the imperial language. Perhaps only the Alliance-oriented Phezzani news would contain mention of this miraculous cadet, and Kircheis had no idea how to access such things. The average Imperial citizen certainly couldn’t. Leigh must be able to, somehow, and the commodore, as well.

Kircheis didn’t really want to ask Leigh about it, because it felt far too personal, but he really did need to know. 

He wished there was someone who could understand this wild feeling welling up inside of him, but there was no one. Although Hilde was his closest friend, he had never directly addressed his homosexual inclinations with her, and he wasn’t sure that this was the moment that he wanted to do so. He couldn’t talk to Martin about it, for obvious reasons. And Leigh, he was going to have to talk to Leigh and just hope that he didn’t give too much away. 

Really, the person Kircheis wanted to talk to in that moment, desperately, was Reinhard himself. He traced his finger over the lock of hair, tucked within the glass of the picture frame. 

* * *

Kircheis found Leigh during his office hours. He was sitting at his desk, leaned back in his chair with his arm draped over his face to block out the late-afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window. He said, “Come in,” when Kircheis knocked on his door, but didn’t shift from his position except to lift his arm enough to confirm that it was indeed Kircheis walking in.

“Are you not feeling well, sir?” Kircheis asked. “I can come back some other time.”

“Hunh? No, I’m fine,” Leigh said. He gestured vaguely at the other seat, which Kircheis took. “Just thinking.”

“Do you mind if I ask about what, sir?”

“Oh, you know, the unending misery of human history.” He smiled a little. “That, and what my landladies are going to be serving for dinner tonight.” He finally straightened up a little. “What can I do for you, Kircheis? You seemed pretty agitated, yesterday.”

“I would like to apologize again for overhearing your conversation,” he said. “I should have left.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leigh said. “If I was going to discuss anything particularly salacious with Commodore Reuenthal, I certainly wouldn’t be doing it here in my office.” He smirked a little.

“Nothing salacious, sir?”

Leigh raised an eyebrow. “What, are you curious about something you heard?”

Kircheis tensed up in his seat, which made Leigh chuckle. “No, sir,” Kircheis said.

“You’re welcome to ask questions.”

“You mentioned Commodore Bronner…” Kircheis finally said after a second. “And his accusations.”

Leigh laughed again. “Kircheis, I’m shocked that you hadn’t figured this out by now: Commodore Bronner will accuse anyone and everyone of being a homosexual. When I worked at the PI unit, more than half the files he handed me had a big ‘homosexual?’ written in the personal notes section. We can be reasonably assured that half the imperial admiralty, and all of the Alliance admiralty are not actually implicated in such things. I think he likes the rise the accusation gets out of people.” He paused, considering something. “After all, it’s an invisible thing, and it’s in everyone’s best interest to deny it, but not in a way that makes it look like you’re too invested…” Leigh shrugged. “It’s an open wound, and Bronner likes nothing more than to stick his fingers in that kind of wound, just to make people jump.”

“Oh,” Kircheis said.

“Were you hoping that I would tell you if Commodore Reuenthal is or is not a homosexual?”

“No, sir!”

Yang smiled at Kircheis’s flustered reaction. “See, it makes people jump.”

“Yes, sir,” Kircheis said, trying not to think about it too much.

“And, anyway, you know as well as I do that Bronner probably still sometimes listens to the conversations I have in here, so he can just be aware that there may be consequences for his insinuations.” Leigh shrugged. “Was there something else?”

“Yeah.” Kircheis hesitated. “Commodore Reuenthal was talking about that cadet…”

Leigh seemed surprised. “Yes. Are you about to ask if I really think that you and Hilde could commandeer a ship?”

Kircheis shook his head, feeling very strange that Leigh would jump to that. “No, sir. I was wondering, did you look up the articles that Commodore Reuenthal was talking about?”

“Oh, yes, I did,” Leigh said. “Did you want me to send them to you?”

“If you could, sir. I don’t have access to the Alliance aimed news.”

“Sure. You’ve gotten pretty good at reading the language, haven’t you?”

“I think so, sir,” Kircheis said.

In the Alliance language, Leigh asked, “Is there a reason you want the articles?”

Reading was one thing; speaking was another. Fumblingly, Kircheis replied in the same language, “I’m interested in the cadet.”

“Why?” Leigh tilted his head consideringly. “Not that it matters, I suppose.”

“I think… I knew him, as a child. Unless it’s a different person.”

“Really?” Leigh leaned forward.

Kircheis pulled the photograph out of his bag and showed it to Leigh. “Is this him, sir?”

Leigh studied it for half a second. “That’s his sister?” He pointed at Annerose.

“Yes, sir.”

“The resemblance is uncanny.” Leigh picked up his tablet and poked around on it for a second, then turned it towards Kircheis. Staring out from the screen was a school photograph, with Reinhard dressed in what Kircheis assumed was the Alliance cadet uniform. He had a sort of haughty expression on his face, and his long blond hair was tied back in a stiff looking french braid. Kircheis couldn’t help his involuntary intake of breath. Kircheis studied the photograph silently. He hadn’t seen Reinhard in almost a decade. 

“He’s clearly very talented,” Leigh said. “The article says he’s number one in his class.” He laughed a little. “Clearly, the Empire is worse off for not having him here. I suspect I might have enjoyed having him as a student.”

“I don’t think so, sir,” Kircheis said, distracted.

“Oh, you don’t think I would like him?”

“No, I mean, I don’t think the Empire would be better if he had stayed here. He swore to destroy the Goldenbaum dynasty.”

“At age ten?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s ambitious, then.”

“Yes.” Kircheis was still staring at the photograph. 

“You remember him well?” Leigh asked. He gently tugged the tablet away from Kircheis, breaking the spell that the photograph was holding him under.

“Very well, sir,” Kircheis said. “I think he was the greatest friend that I ever could have.”

“Oh? Well, I’m sorry for your sake, that he left the country.”

Kircheis shook his head. “He left for a good reason,” he said. “I think he’s probably happier.”

“Can I ask why?”

“His father tried to sell his sister to the kaiser. His mother took them both and left.”

Leigh nodded. “Good.” He had a strange tone in his voice.

“Is something the matter, sir?”

“Let’s take a walk, Kircheis.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kircheis and Leigh both stood, and silently headed out of the office, out onto the snow-covered green. Leigh immediately stuck his hands in his pockets, having neglected to bring his winter gear. Kircheis didn’t mind the cold so much. They walked until they were a decent distance away from all the academic buildings, and there were no other students or staff in sight.

“Can I tell you something, Kircheis?”

“Of course, sir.”

“I get the feeling that you’re a person who can understand me, even if maybe it’s overstepping my jurisdiction as your teacher to confide some of this in you. It’s something I’ve been thinking about quite a lot.”

“That’s fine, sir.”

Leigh collected his thoughts for a moment. “One of the jobs of a historian, as I see it, anyway, is to bear witness to injustice.” He paused. “I always wanted to be a historian. I thought that— historians have this unique ability to topple the dictators of the past, by exposing their wrongs, and they can do that without harming anyone, really. Or, at least, not directly.” Yang rubbed his head. “I thought that I could be a historian, here. It would be difficult, maybe, because the way the Empire constructs stories about itself is itself dangerous, but I thought that I could do it.”

“You are, sir,” Kircheis said. “I thought your book was very enlightening.”

Leigh shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.” He took a breath, then exhaled loudly, his breath fogging up the air. “What I mean is that… I thought I could be a witness to the injustices of the past. But I’m not. Or, at least, that’s not all I am.”

“Sir?”

“You said your friend’s sister was going to be sold to the kaiser.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She is very beautiful. I can see why she would catch the kaiser’s eye.”

Kircheis nodded. “Was there a recent photo of her, in the news?”

“No, or at least I didn’t see one. I just mean in the picture you showed me. That was taken right before they left, I assume.”

“Yes,” Kircheis said. “Just by a few months.”

“She was very young, then.”

Kircheis nodded and said nothing, waiting for Leigh to continue. He did,. after a long moment.

“You know that Kaiser Friedrich favors me, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Being in his favor has meant… quite a lot for me, personally and professionally. I would not be here without his direct assistance.” He laughed, a little ruefully. “In fact, I might not even be alive.”

“I am grateful, then, that the kaiser favors you,” Kircheis said carefully.

“As am I. It’s… difficult.” He sighed. “I have lost the rights of historians, I think.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“There are many injustices that I have borne witness to, Kircheis,” Yang said. “It would be one thing if they were happening in the past. It’s another to see them happening right in front of me.” He sighed. “Your friend’s sister. I know what kind of fate she escaped from.”

Kircheis just nodded.

“I can only imagine— in a slightly different lifetime, we might have known each other well.” Leigh shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you the number of times that I have spoken with the kaiser’s current favored woman, Susanna von Benemunde. I’ve dined at her table. I’ve even been a recipient of her personal generosity, in small ways.”

Kircheis looked over at Leigh, who was frowning deeply, scuffing his feet through the snow on the path.

“She does not live an easy life. Nor does anyone else in her position, like the late Prince Ludwig’s wife, Ingrid.” His voice cracked a little. “And it pains me to say that I have been directly responsible for making Susanna von Benemunde’s life worse.”

“How, sir?”

“I shouldn’t have said that.” Leigh shook his head again. “In a different lifetime, your friend’s sister, I could have watched her come into the kaiser’s favor— I know what that does to a woman!— and done nothing. Absolutely nothing. Or worse than nothing. Because the kaiser favors me.”

“It’s not your fault, sir,” Kircheis said, feeling rather overwhelmed by Leigh’s sudden expression of vulnerability.

“No? Captain Oberstein says that I’m so wrapped up in bearing witness that I become afraid to act.”

“Who?”

“Nevermind, you don’t know him.” Leigh was twisting his fingers through the hair on the back of his head. “Your friend had the right idea.”

“To leave?”

Leigh laughed. “I fled the Alliance, or Phezzan— it doesn’t really matter which. They’re the same. And I came here. Someone told me that I maybe could do some good, and I believed that. But…” He spread his hands, looking down at them. “I’m watching every injustice that occurs in the kaiser’s court, and what do I do?”

“You saved people at El Facil.”

“Yeah.” Leigh deflated a little. “Sure.” He put his hand on Kircheis’s shoulder, briefly. “I’m sorry for ranting to you. It’s not really anything I could say to someone else.”

“That’s fine, sir.” Hesitantly, he added, “I think that you’re doing good, here.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Leigh said, his voice falling back into one of his dry tones. “But there’s only so much good one can do while still being a servant of the kaiser. I’m training his weapons of war.”

“You do a good job making us think about the consequences.”

“I might do a good job making you think about the consequences,” Leigh said. “But your classmates— you’ve graded their postmortems. You’ve played against them. No matter what I do, they’re still thinking that this is a game. And I can’t fault them: it is. But at best they’re learning that the value of human life is in the points I assign them when I grade their essays. Somehow, when I put it like that, what I’m doing feels even more evil.”

“If there’s evil here, sir, I’m sure it’s not you.”

“I appreciate that, Kircheis.” He shook his head. “Please don’t mention any of this to Hilde, if you would. She’s on social terms with Marquise Benemunde, and I don’t want to trouble her.”

“Of course not, sir.”

“Thank you,” Leigh said. He turned, and they headed back towards the academic buildings. “I’m very sorry for lecturing you,” he said as they walked, clearly trying to inject some levity into his voice. “You get enough of me during class— I’m not sure how you can bear hearing me any more than that.”

“I think what you have to say is interesting, sir.”

Leigh laughed. “Why, thank you, Kircheis. You might be the only one who feels that way.”

Although Kircheis had tried to cheer Leigh up, his words stuck with him that night, as he perused the news articles that Leigh forwarded to him about Reinhard. He couldn’t help but feel an echo of Leigh’s own guilt, or at least a premonition that if nothing changed, in a few years, at best, Kircheis would be in the exact same position that Leigh found himself in now. 

Kircheis stared at the photographs of Reinhard, wearing the imperial uniform on the bridge of the Falke, caught in the fuzzy lens of the security cameras. Long ago, they had pledged to take down the Empire together. He had, somehow, done what Reinhard had asked him to: joined the fleet, and he was well on his way to securing himself a good position that would raise him through the ranks if he played his cards right. But rising through the ranks was an easy and clear path to see. Using that to destroy the Goldenbaums?

If the plan was to wait and see when to act, without having a plan, how easy it would be to justify any injustice with a promise of future change. How easy it would be, to stay subservient to this system for his whole life, never finding an opportunity, or never taking those that were found. The thought terrified him.

Reinhard had seemed so sure and confident. He still looked that way in these photos. He would have never allowed himself to fall into this kind of trap. 

And neither would Martin, either, Kircheis knew.

He felt like he was teetering on a precipice, the yawning chasm of the future. He would be graduating in just a few months, and then he, too, would be one of His Majesty’s servants. And he might even come face to face with Reinhard, that way. And if he did, what would both of them do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyy welcome back to this story! I hope you enjoyed our brief interlude. This chapter is a bit of a bridge to get a few lingering plot points all onto the same page, but hopefully you are entertained by it anyway.
> 
> So. Kircheis is feeling very alienated from everyone around him. This is pretty unfortunate, but not at all unexpected. He and Martin can’t trust each other, he’s realized that he can’t trust Yang (because Yang keeps like, being dodgy), and although he likes and trusts Hilda, he doesn’t want to drag her into his mess. If only Reinhard were here. :p
> 
> If you forgot what was going on with Reinhard, you can go back and read ch13-15 of Life out of Balance, but I think the short little summary here is fairly comprehensive. Although I overuse eavesdropping as a plot device (because it’s fun), Kircheis listening in on this conversation to learn about Reinhard is a direct mirror of Reinhard eavesdropping on Kircheis, (because I think that’s fun)
> 
> Yang is having many and varied personal problems. He’s got one friend telling him to gain rank in order to do treason, his boyfriend telling him to gain rank because power is good, and he’s like oh god I’m working for the literal devil aren’t I? It’s a situation for sure. Anyway should he be dumping all of this on kircheis? Lol no. Yang please have some professional boundaries.
> 
> Bronner is the worst but also very funny. Thank you all for indulging me with him.
> 
> There’s like, max two chapters left in this story. Might only be one, depending on how long it takes for me to wrap things up. We’ll see. In any event, we’ll be back with Reinhard and Co. for the next part: Lighting out for the Territories.
> 
> Thank you to Em and Lydia for the beta read! Find me on tumblr @javert and on twitter @natsinator . Original fiction @bit.ly/arcadispark and @bit.ly/shadowofheaven . See you soon!


	18. Jacob’s Ladder

_ April 486, Odin _

Spring, Yang’s favorite season, had finally returned to the capital in full force. Winter had stretched its cold fingers as far into March as it could, but eventually the warm winds off the not-too-distant ocean beat it back into submission, and flowers worked their way out of their buds into riotous bloom. The only thing that could have made it better, Yang thought, was Reuenthal being in the capital, but he was stationed with his fleet in the Iserlohn corridor. 

Mittermeyer was about to leave, too, heading off to take a short stint as the commander of the fleet forces stationed on a small frontier planet named Barbarasturm . Evangeline was, understandably, annoyed at Mittermeyer having the posting, but he had reassured her that it would be for less than a year. She could have come with him, and he had asked her to come, but this had led to, apparently, the first major fight of their marriage. Yang hadn’t been present for it, but he had heard all about it third-hand through Magdalena. Understandably, Evangeline had not wanted to leave her career on Odin. Magdalena had described Mittermeyer as intellectually understanding this, but having asked her anyway because he was worried about what people would think. This had been the wrong thing for Mittermeyer to be worried about, in Evangeline’s eyes. Yang was glad he had not been a fly on the wall for that conversation.

They had made up, presumably, because the two of them seemed happy with each other as they sat across from each other at a table on a veranda at Magdalena’s estate. Yang was seated next to Mittermeyer, and Magdalena was next to Evangeline, with her arm wrapped firmly around Evangeline’s waist. They had just eaten dinner, and the sun was casting their whole company in rosy pink shades. Their wine glasses were almost empty, and the remnants of the shortcake they had eaten for dessert were mostly smears on their plates.

“I’ll be sure to keep Eva excellent company while you’re away, Wolfgang,” Magdalena was saying. “She’ll hardly even know you’re gone.”

“I certainly hope that’s not true,” Mittermeyer said. “Since I’ll miss her.”

“Tch. Typical selfishness, wanting someone else to be just as miserable as you are. It’s not Eva’s fault that you picked the worst career.”

“At least it’s not engineering,” Mittermeyer said. “It could be worse.”

This got a laugh out of Evangeline and Magdalena. “I will miss you,” Evangeline said. “And I hope that it ends up being less than a year. I still can’t believe you’re being exiled to the frontier. I thought they only did that to people who were out of favor.”

Yang shook his head. “Not always,” Yang said. “I suspect there are a couple of reasons for why they’re sending Mittermeyer out there.”

“I was under the impression that the fleet assigned their commanders by throwing darts at a starchart,” Magdalena said. “Considering that you and Oskar have held more different positions between the two of you than I have fingers to count.”

“I sometimes think it would be more reasonable if it was random,” Mittermeyer said, “but then the poor fellows in the PI unit would be out of a job.”

Yang laughed a little. “Please, you don’t want to unleash them on the rest of the fleet. They’re all stuck in that basement for a reason. I would certainly know.”

“So, why do you think that Wolfgang is getting reassigned to the frontier of frontiers?” Magdalena asked. “I want to hear your theory.”

“Well, it’s twofold,” Yang said. “I hope you don’t mind that I did do a little bit of looking into it.”

“Not at all,” Mittermeyer said. “I was hoping you would, honestly.”

“Don’t mind me sticking my head back down into the PI unit basement and asking to see your file?” Yang asked with a smile.

“Look, I’m sure my file is a lot better looking than yours. I should be proud to have it displayed.”

Yang laughed. “Oh, that’s almost certainly true.”

“So, what did you discover?” Evangeline asked.

“First of all, both Barbarasturm and Mittermeyer have reputations.”

“Oh?” Magdalena asked. “What kind?”

“Mittermeyer is known for being competent and collected in difficult, unforgiving situations,” Yang said. “Mostly due to holding things down at Kapche-Lanka, not just during the siege, but during your whole tenure there.”

Mittermeyer nodded. “Not a bad reputation to have. But Barbarasturm I’ve heard is pretty pleasant, if a bit on the arid side. And with a thirty-hour day.”

“Didn’t Kapche-Lanka have a long day?” Evangeline asked.

“Yeah,” Mittermeyer said. “But it honestly didn’t make much of a difference, since the weather was so bad. On base we ran the schedule on a twenty-five-hour clock. Five shifts of five. It didn’t really matter that we were out of sync with the actual solar clock.”

“Thirty’s not unmanageably bad, I’ve heard,” Yang said. “Most people get used to it.”

“So, what’s actually wrong with the place?” Magdalena asked.

“I don’t actually know how true this is, but Bronner was mentioning something about the local baron being hard to get along with.”

“Oh, is that all?” Mittermeyer asked. “I knew about that. The man I’m taking over from, Rear Admiral Jurgenson, sent me a very polite but strongly worded letter about how to deal with him.”

“Barons,” Magdalena said with a sniff. “All the same.”

Evangeline laughed. “But not you?”

“Oh, darling, I’m a baroness; it’s much different. My father, on the other hand…” She shrugged and smiled. “You had better be careful,” she added. “That far from the capital, the local nobility tends to get ideas.”

“Really?” Evangeline asked. “Like what?”

“Oh, well, I’ve seen it happen often enough. Someone gets granted a piece of land to rule over, and they start thinking that they’re the god of their own little patch. Say what you will about the kaiser and Minister of State Lichtenlade— they at least understand the balance between the crown, the nobility, and the people. Move someone self-important out far enough away that the crown’s influence fades, and they’ll start thinking they can do whatever they like. It often isn’t pretty.”

Yang made a bit of a face. “Perhaps they shouldn’t have such unchecked power.”

“Well, of course,” Magdalena said. “That’s what people like Wolfgang are sent to be: the crown’s checking of their power.”

That hadn’t been what Yang meant, and Magdalena knew it, but Yang wasn’t going to dig his heels in about republicanism in front of Mittermeyer and Evangeline, neither of whom were particularly interested in politics. 

“Who is the local baron?” Evangeline asked.

“Baron Claude von Maier,” Mittermeyer and Magdalena said at the same time, which made Evangeline laugh.

“Is he someone I should know?” she asked.

“Not unless you’re planning to move to the frontier,” Magdalena said. “His wife is actually the cousin of Duke Braunschweig, you know. And Baron Flegel, whom I’m sure you’ve seen lurking around the capital— he’s Duke Braunschweig’s nephew— is very close with them .”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Mittermeyer said. “But I did see a bunch of von Maiers in my list of officers that I’m going to be inheriting.”

Magdalena laughed at that. “Yes, I’d hazard they’re his sons or nephews or something like that. They all like to be close to the nest, because it gives them the same sense of power as the father. A name will go a lot further there than it would if they were in actual positions on the front.”

“Interesting that such strings could be pulled,” Evangeline said.

“Oh, darling, we can’t talk about pulling strings when our dear Hank has had more strings pulled for him than anyone else in this galaxy.”

“Different circumstances,” Yang protested.

“Hardly. A name has power in it. Knowing the right people, being on their good side, getting them to do you favors— well, it’s all part of how things work.”

Mittermeyer had a bit of a frown now, too. “Do you have any words of advice for dealing with these people? It’s not like I have much of a name.”

“Mmm,” Magdalena said. “Are you good at sucking up?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Mittermeyer said. “That’s the one thing that was good about engineering. I didn’t have to worry about any of these politics. People just wanted to get the job done.”

“I’d say just try to avoid stepping on any toes.”

“I thought you said that his job was going to be to step on toes,” Evangeline said.

“Oh, yes. That’s the tricky thing. You have to step on people’s toes gently. In a way that gives them what they want. You know what I mean, Hank.” 

Yang flushed, thinking of the first night that he met Magdalena. She laughed at him.

“Didn’t you say that there was another reason that I was being put there?” Mittermeyer asked, rescuing Yang from having to explain his embarrassed reaction.

“Oh, yeah,” Yang said. “It’s a stupid reason, though.”

“What?”

He scratched the back of his head. “You’ve gotten promoted so fast that it’s gotten to the point where, well, you know, it would be embarrassing if you climbed any higher, at least for now. I mean, you don’t have a family name, and you’re well on your way to making full admiral before you’re even thirty. That’s pretty unusual.” He shrugged a little. “So they’re sticking you somewhere where you’re unlikely to do anything very impressive for a while. That’s all.”

“I should probably be unhappy about that.”

“Think of it as a nice little vacation,” Magdalena said. “After all, you’re unlikely to get shot at like you would if you were at the front.”

“Are you going to get to take the Westberlin with you?” Evangeline asked. “I know you love that ship.”

“Hah, yeah. While I’m there it’ll join the little stationed fleet. It’s not as though the planet is in danger of getting attacked, but I’ll have jurisdiction to deal with pirates and check to make sure no merchants are trafficking contraband onto or off of the planet. That sort of thing. I probably won’t leave the planet’s surface, but, you know.” He shrugged a little. “I should probably figure out the best way to deploy my ships, since I won’t be with them…” He trailed off, thinking about it. “Any thoughts, Leigh?”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll have a fine time,” Magdalena said. She stood. “Eva, would you care to go for a turn about the garden with me? It helps with digestion, you know.”

“Oh, sure, of course.”

“We’ll let our boys have their stimulating discussion about how to move their toys around space. I’m sure we don’t need to be here to hear it, do we, darling?”

Evangeline smiled. “Do you mind?”

“No, go ahead,” Mittermeyer said. 

Magdalena cheerfully wrapped her arm around Evangeline’s shoulder and led her through the house towards the garden, leaving Yang and Mittermeyer alone.

Mittermeyer sighed a little.

“Did you actually want advice on moving your ships?”

“What? Oh, I don’t know. I doubt I’ll have to.”

“Probably not. And it’s not like pirates typically have communications jamming capabilities. If there’s any trouble it’s not like you won’t be able to watch it closely from the planet.”

Mittermeyer nodded. He looked out into the garden towards the now-distant Magdalena and Evangeline. “Is there a reason why your girlfriend is acting like that with my wife?”

“I can tell her to lay off if you want. I think she’s just having fun,” Yang said, trying not to cringe with embarrassment. “But it’s not like I’ve ever been able to get Maggie to behave.”

Mittermeyer laughed a little. “I guess Eva likes the attention, so I won’t worry about it.”

“Maggie has just been lonely since she got banished from court.”

“Are they ever going to let her come back?”

“I don’t know,” Yang said. “Princess Amarie still likes her. That will probably be enough, but she has to have a reason, not just come creeping back with her tail between her legs. She’s not nearly apologetic enough, most of the time.”

“I can’t blame her.”

“Yeah.”

Mittermeyer sighed again. “Am I a terrible husband?”

“For going to the frontier?”

“Yeah. Well, that and everything else.”

“You can’t help where you’re assigned.”

“I could have tried harder to convince her to come with me.”

“She likes living on Odin. You’d probably make her more unhappy if you did guilt her into leaving,” Yang said. “I think she understood what she was getting into when she married you.”

“Did she?”

“Well…” Yang trailed off. “I don’t know.”

“I can’t tell if she’s happy with me or not.”

“You could ask.”

Mittermeyer frowned and glanced over at Yang. “And if she didn’t want to hurt my feelings right before I leave for a year, she’d lie.”

“She never really struck me as a liar.”

Mittermeyer leaned his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands. “It’s what I would do.”

“I’m aware,” Yang said, voice dry. “You’re going to stress about this for a year while you’re gone, though, so if you want some closure, maybe you should ask her how she really feels about various things before you go.”

“It’s not exactly possible to get closure on things, you know.”

“Well, yeah. Not unless you’re willing to tell her a lot.”

“I keep thinking that I should, and then I change my mind.”

Yang was silent. They watched the distant figures of Magdalena and Evangeline stroll through the garden. Magdalena pulled a flower off a bush and tucked it in Evangeline’s hair.

“How does Westpfale feel about all of this, by the way? She knows, doesn’t she.”

“What do you mean?”

“About you and Reuenthal.”

“Oh. She knows. I don’t know why she would care, though.”

“Because— You are going to marry her, right?”

“Did she tell you that?”

“It seems like the obvious thing to do.”

Yang raised an eyebrow. “It would create so many more problems than it would solve. I can’t even begin to list how stupid it would be.”

Mittermeyer shook his head. “If you say so.”

“You expect me to change my mind. I don’t know. Unless something about the situation radically changes, I don’t see it happening.”

“What would have to change?”

“You think Reuenthal would be happy if I got married?”

Mittermeyer tensed up a little. “No.”

“Exactly. He’s learned to deal with Eva because your schedules line up so rarely he can pretend she’s not a factor. Even if Maggie didn’t care, he would.” Yang put his hand on Mittermeyer’s arm, briefly. “Don’t worry about me. Or Maggie, for that matter. She has her own problems, and you definitely don’t need to deal with them.”

“If you say so.”

“Are you nervous about going away?” Yang asked.

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that. I think the posting will be fine. Like you said, it’s probably not that difficult. No real combat will be involved. Just acting like an overgrown police commissioner.”

Yang laughed a little. “Yeah. It will be fine.”

Mittermeyer sighed.

“What?” Yang asked.

“The last time I spent a year alone with my thoughts, nothing good came of it.”

Yang laughed. “Please, tell me what other decisions you could start making.”

“I don’t know. I just have the bad feeling that I’m going to find out.”

“I am sure that you’ll be fine. And I’m sure that on Reuenthal’s next leave he’ll find some excuse to come and see you.”

“He really shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“It looks bad. It’s not like the place is exactly a tourist town. It’s hardscrabble farmland, as far as I can tell.”

Yang shrugged. “He can pretend like he has a relative there or something, I don’t know. He’ll find some excuse.”

“If you say so.”

Yang smiled. “I’m not usually wrong about things like that.”

“Yeah.” Mittermeyer turned to Yang slightly. “What did Westpfale mean about stepping on toes?”

“Oh, jeeze,” Yang said. “She just was reminding me how she behaved very badly at a party, once. Don’t worry about it.”

* * *

_ May 486, Odin _

Yang learned about the trouble on Barbarasturm long after it happened, through several different channels.

The first was a phone call in the middle of the night. Yang was asleep, though on his couch rather than his bed, having dozed off while reading a book which had long since slipped out of his hands and onto the floor, the pages gently fluttering in the breeze from the open window. When his phone rang, Yang was so startled and disoriented that he fell off the couch onto the floor, searching his pockets and surroundings for the source of the infernal noise and any sense of what time it was.

He didn’t recognize the number, but Yang had had enough trouble over the past few years that he was not going to ignore a middle of the night phone call. He answered it, blearily.

“Hello?”

“Hank!” He was startled to hear Evangeline’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Eva?”

“Yes— gods, sorry for calling you so late—“

“What time is it?”

“Three thirty.”

“What are you doing up?”

“I was supposed to talk to Wolf— we had a call planned—“

“Did something happen?”

“That’s why I’m calling you— I’m sorry, I know you have nothing to do with it, but I didn’t know who else—“

“Don’t apologize, Eva; it’s fine. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I called his residence, over the ansible line we’ve been using, and there wasn’t any answer. And then I tried his office, and his second in command answered.”

“And what did he say.”

“He said that Wolf wasn’t available.”

“Okay, well, that doesn’t necessarily mean—“

“No, you don’t understand—“

“It’s okay, just tell me what’s going on.”

“He said he wouldn’t be available, and that he couldn’t take a message, or tell me when he was going to get back, or where he was, or what had happened—” She broke off, unable to compose herself. Yang gave her a second, but then realized that she wasn’t going to continue.

“But you haven’t received notice that he’s died. They’d alert you to that.”

“No.”

“So, he’s alive, somewhere. They’d also tell you if he was MIA, because that’s usually just marked down as a casualty,” Yang said. “So we know that his second in command, at least, has a general sense of where he is.”

“What does that mean?”

“Did he sound like he was in trouble?”

“His second? I don’t know. I wasn’t really able to pay attention to anything other than what he was saying.”

Yang nodded, then remembered that he was on the phone and that Evangeline couldn’t see him. “Okay. I’ll see if I can pull some strings to figure out what’s going on.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you call anybody else about this?”

“Who would I call?”

“Reuenthal.”

“What? No.”

“Magdalena?”

“No.”

“Fleet affairs?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay, hold off on that.” Yang scratched his head. “When was the last time that you did speak to him?”

“I sent him a letter—“

“No, I mean the last time you called him, or the last time you got a letter from him.”

“We called each other two weeks ago, and I got a letter from him last week.”

“And last week’s letter seemed normal?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like he wrote it, and he didn’t seem worried, that sort of thing.”

“He’s been stressed but—“

“But nothing out of the usual.”

“No.”

“Okay. Okay.” Yang had gotten up and was pacing around his living room. He eventually went to go lean on the open windowsill to think. “I’ll make some calls, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get in touch with anybody who’s anybody until the morning. Do you think the situation can hold until then?”

“I don’t know what could change.”

“Alright. I’ll send some letters now and make some calls in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Evangeline said, real relief in her voice.

“I can’t make any promises, but I will try to find out what’s going on.”

“I know. That’s all I can ask.”

“You can ask a lot,” Yang said. “But it’s what I’m able to do is another question. Realistically, I’m just a commander. Rear Admiral Reuenthal probably has a bit more sway.” Yang wasn’t sure he was being coherent.

“I don’t think he’d want to help me,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Yang said. “I’m sorry that you get that impression from him.”

“Hank— could we not talk about that now?”

“Oh, gods, yes, sorry. Okay. I’m gonna go. Is that okay?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I know it’s probably useless to say, but do try to get some sleep, okay?”

“I will.”

“Good. Goodnight, Eva.”

“Goodnight, Hank. And good luck.”

“Thank you.”

She hung up on him then, though he heard a catch in her breath as she put the phone down that Yang thought sounded like the beginning of tears.

He took a second to clear his thoughts and make a list of priorities. Number one: Reuenthal would murder him if he didn’t let him know something was up right away. Number two: of all the people in Yang’s sphere, Bronner was the one most likely to know anything. If he was able to learn something from Bronner, that would give him direction. Similarly, not hearing anything from Bronner would also give him an idea of where to go.

His first message to Reuenthal was short.

_ Reuenthal, _

_ I had a call from Eva that Mittermeyer is in some sort of trouble and seems to be unreachable. That’s all I know at the moment. I’m working on finding things out here & will keep you updated. Don’t do anything stupid. _

_ -Leigh _

His message to Bronner, on the other hand, walked a bit more of a delicate line.

_ Commodore Bronner, _

_ A friend of mine, whom I believe you met several years ago, Rear Admiral Wolfgang Mittermeyer, seems to have gotten himself into some sort of trouble during his assignment on Barbarasturm. His wife called me in a panic asking if I could find out what had happened to him, since she was unable to contact him, and she has had no  _ official _ word that he has died or gone missing. _

_ I know that you have no real interest in my personal life, and that of my friends, but I find that when I need to know something official, you are the person who knows how to find that information. I already am deeply in your debt, but I would be further still, and very grateful, if you could point me in the direction of anything that you have heard. _

_ Very respectfully, _

_ Commander Hank von Leigh _

That was, unfortunately, all he could really do at the moment. He might have called up Magdalena, just to get her on the same page, but then decided against it. She almost certainly wouldn’t be able to do anything, so Yang let her sleep in peace, at least for now.

He felt suddenly wired and alert, and he thought that even if he tried to go to sleep, he would have a difficult time. He had class to teach in the morning, but that had slid so far down his list of priorities that it barely even registered.

Yang paced back and forth in his room, trying to step through all the possibilities of what could have happened to Mittermeyer to cause him to vanish. If it had been a military action, it would have been public information, or at least public enough that his wife would have been told that he had taken his flagship off planet… If he had met with some sort of accident, similarly, she would have been told. 

Yang’s eyes, out of focus, fell on his thick copy of  _ Peerage of the Galactic Empire _ , sitting on his bookshelf. He hadn’t touched it in a while, but its red cover jogged his memory. Perhaps Mittermeyer had stepped on the wrong toes.

Yang pulled the book down from his shelf, and, just in case, began taking notes on some of the intricacies of Duke Braunshweig’s family tree, and cross-referencing it with letters that Mittermeyer had sent him, where he had mentioned someone or other living on the planet.

Yang continued this exercise until he had run out of his own letters, sent a quick message to Eva asking to see her letters, and then passed out, completely exhausted.

Sleep did not keep him for long, though, because at about six in the morning, an hour before he had to get up for work, Yang’s phone rang again, this time with the particular, recognizable tone that told him he was getting an urgent video call. 

He fumbled to answer it in the dim, pre-dawn light.

“Reuenthal—“ he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “You got my message?”

“Yes, I did,” Reuenthal replied. He was frowning at the screen. “Have you heard anything else?”

“No,” Yang said. “You?”

“I made some inquiries.”

“What kind?” Yang asked, leaning forward. “What time is it for you?” He never could remember what time Iserlohn fortress operated at, compared to the capital time on Odin. It didn’t really matter.

“Second watch just started,” Reuenthal said. “I tried to see if I could get in contact with him.”

“You weren’t able to, I assume.”

“No, of course not. But it gave me an excuse to ask around where he’s gone. I don’t think he’s on the planet anymore.”

Yang nodded. “Is he being sent back to Odin?”

“Maybe,” Reuenthal said. “He might be coming to Iserlohn.”

“What?”

“I asked in the navigation office, and was told that the Westberlin filed a flight plan to Iserlohn. It should be here in about a day.”

“Why would he be coming there?” Yang asked. It didn’t make much sense. He shook his head. “I don’t think he’s on the Westberlin,” he said. “Evangeline would have been told if he was.”

“Why would anyone tell her that?”

“Because it is standard practice, if someone is in trouble, to at least keep their next of kin informed of their whereabouts.” Yang was snippy, and he regretted his tone, but Reuenthal didn’t seem to notice or care. “If it’s official trouble, people get served a court martial and it’s all very public, or close to it. This isn’t that. He wouldn’t be on the Westberlin.”

“Then where is he?”

“Probably still on the planet.”

“Then why would the Westberlin be coming here?”

“Maybe he was able to get a message out?” Yang rubbed his temple. “I don’t know. We don’t have any information. Maybe he’s not even in trouble and we’re all overreacting.”

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah.” Yang was silent for a second. “Are you going to do anything?”

“I’ll wait for the Westberlin to arrive, at least. Hear what they have to say for themselves. If that’s nothing, then I’ll go to Barbarasturm myself.”

“You can’t just go AWOL. Especially not with your flagship.”

“I’ll find some way to justify it. Don’t worry about me. What are you going to do?”

“I’m asking around,” Yang said. “I have a lot of contacts. Hopefully I can find something.”

There was a muffled sound from the other end of the call, and Reuenthal looked up from his computer. “I have to go. Keep me updated.” Before Yang could even say goodbye, or good luck, Reuenthal ended the ansible call, leaving Yang alone in the hazy light of his room. 

Unfortunately, as much as he wanted to spend all day figuring things out, Yang still had to go and teach his class. He dragged himself to the IOA, arriving more out of sorts than he ever had before, which was saying quite a lot. (There had been several mornings where Reuenthal had delayed him, which always made him flustered.) This was, unfortunately, far less pleasant, and he delivered his lecture to his class without even listening to himself speak. He could have been lecturing about anything, and it might not have borne any resemblance to the scenario that he was going to have his students play.

At lunch, Kircheis came up to him. Yang was sitting at his desk, frowning, with his head tilted back and his eyes closed.

“Is everything alright, Commander?”

Yang was so startled that he jumped. “Kircheis— oh. Probably not, I’ll be honest with you.”

Kircheis had a weird expression on his face. “Oh, okay.”

“Is everything alright with you?”

“I’m not sure,” Kircheis said.

Yang narrowed his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

“I… got a message this morning that I’m not sure how to interpret.”

Yang sat up. “From?”

“It looks like it’s from someone in the colonial affairs office, but I don’t recognize the name.”

“Your old assistantship?”

“Yeah.”

“And what’s the message about?”

“It’s… I don’t think I was supposed to get this letter, sir,” Kircheis said.

Yang was exhausted. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. “Here are the possibilities: you are supposed to receive the message, and the person who sent it is trying to be helpful. You are supposed to receive the message, and the person who sent it is trying to trick you in some way. You weren’t supposed to receive it— and it’s either going to get you in trouble for having it or not. Pick, and either tell me or don’t tell me what it is.”

When Kircheis didn’t say anything, Yang opened his eyes and glanced at him. Kircheis seemed unhappy. 

“I’m sorry,” Yang said with a heavy sigh. “I’ve got a lot on my plate right this second. Look, let me see this letter. I’ll give you my professional opinion on it, if you want.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kircheis said. He pulled out his phone and handed it to Yang, who squinted at the unfamiliar and too-dim display. The letter started off with a bang: it was addressed care of the Colonial Affairs Office to the Ministry of War, and the letter writer had gone out of their way to put a significant amount of the text in bold red letters. It gave Yang a headache to read it. But when he did finally get past the form of the text and into the meat of it, he had the dawning realization why Kircheis had been sent this letter.

The message was from Baron von Maier, and he was unhappy at fleet command for assigning someone (name wasn’t mentioned, but Yang could immediately deduce that it was Mittermeyer) to his planet, because Mittermeyer had apparently… Yang’s breath caught in his throat. Mittermeyer had killed one of the baron’s relatives. The circumstances under which he had done so were not explained. The letter ended with the baron saying that he had arrested the offender and was returning him to Odin to be “dealt with” by Baron Flegel.

Kircheis was studying Yang as he read the letter. “I think that you’ve been a bit of an unwitting messenger, Kircheis,” Yang said.

“Sir?”

“I’m certain it was Commodore Bronner who put this letter into your hands, fully intending it to arrive in mine.”

“Why would he do that, sir? He could have sent it to you.”

“Commodore Bronner understands the value of not stepping on toes,” Yang said. “Or, at least not until the right moment. It would not be reasonable for me to have access to this information, at least not officially. But if someone who used to work for the colonial affairs office was accidentally forwarded something unwittingly, well, that could perhaps be chalked up to an honest mistake.”

“And Commodore Bronner understands honest mistakes, now?”

“He’s always understood, when it has suited him.”

“Can I ask—“

“Rear Admiral Mittermeyer is the person discussed in this letter,” Yang said. “I suspect, though I do not know, that Bronner is helping me because the idea that Mittermeyer would murder someone is incongrous with his character, to say the least.”

“What are you going to do about it, sir?”

Yang sighed. “I don’t know.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I think a lot of that depends on when Mittermeyer arrives back on Odin, and if he’s alive when he gets here. And what I’ve been able to find out in the meantime.”

“Can you investigate? Prove that he didn’t murder anyone?”

“Kircheis, this planet, Barbarasturm, is not close. I don’t have a ship of my own. I don’t have contacts on the planet, either.”

Kircheis hesitated. “Do you want help, sir?”

“I appreciate the thought, but I’m not sure what kind of help you could offer me.”

“I might…” He trailed off a little bit. “My friend Martin, really, might have contacts. I can ask him.”

Yang tilted his head. “And why would Martin know anyone on the frontier of frontiers?”

“Please don’t ask me that question,” Kircheis said. “Because I don’t want to know the answer. All I’m saying is that he might. I could ask him.”

“And these friends would be amenable to helping an imperial rear admiral who has been accused of murder?”

“I don’t know,” Kircheis said. “I don’t know if they exist. All I’m asking is if you want me to ask.”

“Don’t put yourself in danger,” Yang said finally. “Of course I deeply appreciate any help that you can give, but you are, first and foremost, my student, and not anything else.”

“Alright, sir.”

“I would like to meet your friend Martin someday,” Yang said. “Maybe when you graduate.”

“Maybe, sir,” Kircheis said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.” Yang handed Kircheis back his phone. “And thank you for this, already.”

Kircheis nodded, then turned to go.

* * *

The next morning, Yang woke to one piece of news from a very unexpected source.

_ Commander von Leigh, _

_ I trust that you are already aware that your friend, Rear Admiral Mittermeyer, has come into some trouble. Early this morning, at 422 (IFT), Rear Admiral Mittermeyer’s flagship, the Westberlin, docked at Iserlohn fortress. Mittermeyer himself was not on board, however, the captain of the ship, Captain Osswick, demanded to speak to Rear Admiral Reuenthal. _

_ After a brief conversation, Rear Admiral Reuenthal departed Iserlohn Fortress aboard the Ostberlin. (The Westberlin has temporarily joined the Iserlohn stationed fleet.) I do not know what his intended destination is. _

_ I hope this information is of use to you. _

_ Respectfully, _

_ Captain Paul von Oberstein _

Absolutely nothing in that message was encouraging. Apparently, Yang’s plea to Reuenthal to not go AWOL had gone unheeded. He hoped that Reuenthal had, in fact, found a way to justify his movements to his superiors, but Yang wasn’t holding out much hope of that. It was somewhat concerning that Reuenthal did not even send Yang a message saying where he was going.

Yang felt like he was floundering— this was nothing like historical research, even if there were surface similarities of trying to piece together the story. After all, Yang realized, he didn’t just have to put together a story; he had to then do something about it. And if he created the wrong image in his mind, as he suspected that Reuenthal might be doing, he could make a mistake that could cost Mittermeyer

Over the next few days, Yang spent as much time as he could trying to find news articles written on Barbarasturm, paying exorbitant fees to access their local news. There was, surprisingly, absolutely no mention of Mittermeyer whatsoever. Yang had a sneaking suspicion that the local news was under the thumb of the local lord. He did find an obituary, though, for the man who Yang suspected was the one that Mittermeyer had killed. He was a von Maier, young, in the fleet, and had died unexpectedly. There was no mention of what had killed him. 

It would seem, to Yang, anyway, that if Mittermeyer had murdered a beloved local son, there would be far more outrage than there was this official kind of silence and semi-offical retribution. Although Yang had already suspected that Mittermeyer would not simply murder someone, this was making it clear that the local nobility had something to hide. They may have wanted Mittermeyer punished, but they didn’t want to make such a public fuss about it.

Kircheis showed up at Yang’s office hours one day. He had an envelope in his hand, and he passed it to Yang. “Don’t ask me where I got this, or if I can get more, because I can’t. I hope it helps.”

Curious, Yang opened it. Inside was a folded printout of a badly and hastily photocopied police report. Some of the pages appeared to be missing, and some parts of the document were heavily redacted, as though someone had gone over them with a black marker before copying them. But it painted a disturbing picture, nonetheless. The woman filing the report alleged that she had witnessed an imperial officer rob a woman at gunpoint in the alley outside her home. When the woman had struggled, she had ended up shot, which caused her to bleed to death before she could receive medical help. The name of the person accused of this crime was blacked out, and all descriptions of him were missing, but his rank was left in the report, possibly as an oversight. There were only so many captains on Barbarasturm, and Yang cross referenced that with the obituary to see that yes, the man who died had been a captain.

Yang thanked Kircheis for the information, and he just shook his head. It was helpful, though, Yang thought. Or, it would be, if he could figure out exactly what to do with it.

Mittermeyer had still not appeared on the planet, but, all of a sudden, Reuenthal did. The Ostberlin landed in the capital’s airfield with no fanfare, except for the fact that it was certainly not supposed to be there, and thus caused some trouble for the air traffic control, which Yang caught wind of, as he had been half tuning-in to the ATC radios all week, waiting for any sign of him. 

When the sign did come, Yang dropped what he was doing (eating dinner alone in his apartment) and scrambled to go meet Reuenthal at the airfield. He called him while en route on the train. 

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” Yang muttered under his breath, listening to the phone ring and ring in his ear.

Eventually, Reuenthal answered. “Leigh— where are you?"

“I’m on the train to come stop you from doing anything stupid,” Yang said. “Where are you?”

“Get off at whatever stop you take to go to the ministry of war,” Reuenthal said. “I will meet you there.”

Yang wanted to yell at Reuenthal not to go in without him, or to find out what exactly Reuenthal was trying to do, but he suspected that anything he said to that effect would fall on deaf ears. So instead, he just silently willed the train he was on to move as quickly as possible, and tumbled out onto the platform and ran towards the ministry of war as fast as he could. The twilight was already muted, but it grew dimmer by the second as fat clouds moved in to cover the sky, and then thick drops of warm rain began to fall, splashing onto the sidewalk and getting Yang thoroughly soaked by the time that he arrived.

Reuenthal was waiting for him in the lobby. 

“Reuenthal!” Yang called to get his attention. Reuenthal turned. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in several days, from the gauntness of his expression, but in other respects he was as well put together as he always was. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to demand to see Fleet Admiral Muckenburger,” Reuenthal said, standing stiffly, with his arms behind his back.

“You can’t,” Yang protested.

“Why not?”

“You’ll throw your entire career away if you do! Gods, Reuenthal, you went AWOL. You can’t just do that. You especially can’t do that and then just march into Muckenburger’s office and make demands.” He still hadn’t managed to figure out if Reuenthal had managed to justify his disappearance or not, but he was sure that charging in to Muckenburger’s office wouldn’t help the situation at all. 

“I can and I will.”

“Reuenthal— get ahold of yourself. He’s not even here right now.”

“How do you know?”

“He spends most of his time in Neue Sanssouci these days, I’ve heard,” Yang lied. He needed to get Reuenthal out of the building. “And I didn’t see his car when I walked in through the lot.”

“I need to speak with him.”

“Reuenthal!” Yang grabbed his arm. “I have things I need to discuss with you, and then we can make a plan. Do you understand?” His knuckles were white, gripping Reuenthal’s arm so hard that if not for his uniform sleeve, his nails might have broken skin. It seemed to jolt Reuenthal back to some semblance of his senses. 

“Fine,” he said. 

Yang let out a rush of breath, and they headed out of the ministry of war, at least this one crisis potentially averted. 

“Where have you been?” Yang asked once they were a decent distance from the building. “I heard that you ran out of Iserlohn, but you took way longer to get here than I thought you would.”

“I was chasing down a ship,” Reuenthal said. “The one that Mittermeyer was on.”

“What?”

“He was taken from Barbarasturm,” Reuenthal said. “But not on a military transport.”

Yang’s eyes narrowed. “A merchant ship?”

“Might as well call them pirates if they’re kidnapping people. But yes, a merchant vessel.”

“And you were following it?”

“I was attempting to meet up with it on the nav route that it had filed. But I missed it. Either they were faster than I was, which I doubt, or they changed their course to avoid being followed.”

“Where did they go?”

“They’re supposed to be here,” Reuenthal said. “I don’t know if Mittermeyer made it here alive, but I suspect he did, and he’s being hidden somewhere. A prison, maybe. We can hope it’s a military prison. If it’s not—“ Reuenthal clenched his fist.

“Is that information all that the Westberlin’s crew brought you?”

“No, that wasn’t all they brought me.”

“What else do you have?”

“Mittermeyer’s personal files. What’s left of them, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone thought to make it look like Mittermeyer was executing his subordinates without reason,” Reuenthal said, then stopped, perhaps realizing that Yang might not know anything. “Do you know what he’s been accused of?”

“Murder,” Yang said. “But I know he didn’t.”

Reuenthal nodded. “They scrubbed his computers, wiped as much as they could of his paper trail. The crew of the Westberlin were able to rescue some of it, and they brought it to me.”

“Why you?”

“The crew of that ship have been with Mittermeyer for years. They’re well aware that we’re friends.”

Yang nodded. “I’ve found some things out, too.” He explained the letter that Bronner had sent to Kircheis, and then the police report that Kircheis had managed to find, though he didn’t mention its source except in the vaguest terms.

“So, we have more allies than we think.”

“I hope so,” Yang said. “Have you spoken to Evangeline?”

“No,” Reuenthal said.

“I can update her.”

“If you must.”

“She has a right to know.”

“What is your plan?” Reuenthal asked. “If I can’t speak directly to the fleet admiral.”

Yang shook his head. “This whole situation is a mess. It’s... the balancing act, like Magdelena was saying.”

“I don’t believe I recall anything about that.”

“Mittermeyer stepped on the wrong toes,” Yang said. “But the nobles are overstepping their bounds right now, by a lot. They’re destroying evidence, essentially kidnapping people, and they’re banking hard on the idea that no one cares about a commoner rear admiral, even a talented one, enough to cause a fuss. This might not even be about Mittermeyer. Not really. Maybe Baron Maier is trying to push back against having fleet oversight of his little planet at all. He’s put Muckenburger in a bad situation.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve put him in a position of… I suppose essentially dictating the crown’s policy towards colonies’ self government, at least a little. If Muckenburger takes Mittermeyer’s side, that will agitate a lot of people— not just Maier, I think. It would send the message that nobles don’t actually have as much jurisdiction over the planets they’re given to rule as they like to imagine that they are.”

“Good,” Reuenthal said.

“I— okay, well, nevermind.” Yang shook his head. He didn’t want to get into, with Reuenthal, right now, that the kaiser or minister of state having direct control over the colonies was not morally very much different than some lesser noble. “The problem is that Muckenburger probably shouldn’t have the authority to dictate things like that. He’d be stepping on Minister of State Lichtenlade’s toes.”

“And the alternative?”

“If he takes Maier’s side, he’s giving nobles on colony planets that much more of a foothold to order around the fleet outposts there as though they were in charge. It’s a step in a direction that Muckenburger doesn’t want.”

“If we give him what we have, he might be able to publically turn the whole thing around, make it a narrow case instead of a broad one. This is just about Mittermeyer, not about all of colonial policy.”

“It’s all connected,” Yang said. “Mittermeyer just happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, being the wrong person, to get made an example of.”

“So, what do you think Muckenburger is going to do?”

“He’ll probably try to strike a balance. He’ll probably send an investigation team out there, try to figure out what really happened. Drag his feet enough that he can get Mittermeyer’s replacement set up on Barbarasturm, make it really clear that this guy is important and not to be trifled with, and then probably punish Mittermeyer.”

“Punish him how?”

“At best, he loses his position. At worst, he’s imprisoned. I don’t think Muckenburger would go so far as to have him executed— I’m sure that he can see that Mittermeyer is being set up.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure Baron Maier and his family won’t, either,” Yang said. “I was told that Baron Flegel was going to ‘take care of’ Mittermeyer. I don’t think they’re intending to keep him alive. So whatever Muckenburger is planning, I don’t think that will be much of a concern.”

“You’re taking this all very lightly,” Reuenthal said.

Yang glanced at him.”In what way?”

“You’re delivering the news that someone might execute him with the same tone you’d deliver a SW lecture,” Reuenthal said. “You’ve been on Odin this whole time. You could have—“

“Do you expect me to charge into a military prison with just me and my sidearm? How well do you think that would go, Reuenthal? I just learned he’s already on the planet from you, and I don’t know where he’s being kept. I’m doing what I can.”

Reuenthal wasn’t going to apologize. “Then what is your plan? I assume you have one.”

“I’m glad you’re here, at least,” Yang said. This was intended as a concession to Reuenthal’s mood, but it was also the truth. He hesitated for a second. “I think what you should do is track down Flegel. See if you can find where Mittermeyer is being held. Go ahead and antagonize Flegel, if you need to delay him from taking action. Duel him or something. I don’t know.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“I’m in less disgrace than you are, right this moment,” Yang said. “And I think I have a grasp on the politics of the situation.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” Reuenthal said.

“I’m going to go beg,” Yang said, finally. “It’s all I can do.” Reuenthal frowned, but Yang stared off into the distance in front of them. “You need to find Mittermeyer, or Flegel, first, so that we have a bargaining chip.” Yang muttered. “Then I’ll have something I can work with.”

“What do you mean?”

“Make it seem like it’s mutually beneficial for someone to work with us, instead of it just being me falling on their mercy.”

“Who are you going to talk to?”

Yang shook his head. 

“Tell me,” Reuenthal insisted. “The kaiser?”

“No,” Yang said. “That would turn this into a political disaster. If I can, I’m going to speak to Princess Amarie. But I don’t know if I can.”

Reuenthal nodded. “I’ll find out where he is.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Yang said. “Please.”

* * *

Princess Amarie and Duke Braunschweig lived on a vast and beautiful estate, but the heavy rain clouds that had been filling the sky since the night before made the scene gloomy in a way that seemed unpleasantly foreboding. Yang walked up the pebbled path to the front door, with Evangeline at his side. He had thought about bringing Magdalena, but the fact that Magdalena was still slightly in disgrace made that a fraught proposition, so it was just Yang and Evangeline, her wearing her nicest but most staid outfit, and Yang clutching in his hands a thick folder of all the evidence that he and Reuenthal had been able to gather. 

One of the family servants let them into the house. Evangeline couldn’t help but be awed somewhat by the size and grandeur of it (it was an order of magnitude more ostentatious than Magdalena’s estate), but Yang had been in plenty of noble houses, and was far too distracted by the task at hand to appreciate the architecture and decor. He was so distracted, in fact, that Evangeline had to steer him out of the way of a side table, when they were let into some sort of sitting room. 

Evangeline was holding Yang’s arm, but he gently pried it off of him. He didn’t want there to be any implication of impropriety, which was why Magdalena had not come. They were both sitting on a stiff, embroidered couch when Princess Amarie walked in. Yang hastily stood and bowed, and Evangeline curtsied.

“Commander von Leigh, I’m happy to see you again,” Amarie said. “Frau Westpfale told me that you wanted to speak to me.”

“Yes, Princess. Thank you very much for taking the time,” Yang said.

“And who is your accompaniment?”

“This is Evangeline Mittermeyer, the wife of Rear Admiral Mittermeyer.”

“The name is familiar,” Amarie said. “Have I met your husband?” Her tone was light, but Amarie was not a stupid woman, and was almost certainly abreast of the whole situation. Before Evangeline could answer, Amarie took a seat in her armchair, and waved at Yang and Evangeline to be seated also.

“No, I don’t believe so, Princess,” Evangeline said. “But he is the reason that we have come to see you today.”

“Is that so?” Amarie asked. “Is there some sort of trouble that you believe I can help you with? A social matter?”

“Unfortunately not a social matter, no,” Yang said. “It’s more of a family matter.”

Amarie studied Yang. “And whose family?”

“Yours, Princess,” Yang said. 

“I see,” Amarie said. “I suppose there’s no point in pretending that I do not know why you are here. You must know what happened, of course?” She looked at Evangeline, whose face was tight, like she was on the edge of tears.

“I know my husband’s side of the story,” Evangeline said. “And I know that he has been imprisoned, secretly, and I know that I have not been allowed to speak with him or see him.”

“Frau Mittermeyer,” Amarie said, “I bear you no ill-will whatsoever, of course, but it is bold of you to come to my house, asking to see me, when it is my husband’s relation whom your husband killed. Captain William von Maier. Rear Admiral Mittermeyer shot him dead. I believe that is an indisputable fact.” Amarie’s voice was calm, and her hands were laid out on her lap without any movement whatsoever. She could have been a mannequin, except for her breathing and the motions of her mouth and eyes, studying Yang and Evangeline with a piercing gaze. 

If Princess Amarie had been a boy, she would be kaiser already, Yang realized. If Ludwig had never been born, Amarie might have already been the first kaiserin of the dynasty. 

Evangeline’s face crumpled a little.

“It is, Princess,” Yang agreed. “I will not argue with you about that fact.”

“Then I’m curious as to what you have come to argue about? And why you have come to me, instead of to my husband, who is a blood relation of the late Captain von Maier.”

“Because you have been very generous to me in the past,” Yang said. “More than I deserve, to be sure.”

“And you expect that generosity to continue? Especially when the bonds of affection between myself and Magdalena von Westpfale are stretched so very, very thin.”

“They are stretched, but they are not broken,” Yang said. “I would hope someday that you and the rest of court will have it in your hearts to forgive her, but that is neither here nor there.”

“Is it not relevant?” Amarie asked. “I’m sure I will regret the answer, but I hope you will be honest with me, Frau Mittermeyer, Commander von Leigh: what exactly is the relationship that you have with the Baroness Westpfale?” She looked intently at Evangeline who seemed confused by the question.

“The baroness has been very generous to me, and has shown me friendship that I never would have imagined having with someone in her station,” she replied.

Amarie touched her own lip with the tip of her finger. “What type of friendship? What type of generosity, I wonder?”

“Princess,” Yang said, “it’s not like that.”

“No?” Amarie asked. “There’s no reason why a woman might remain behind on Odin while her husband takes a post elsewhere? One where she would have been allowed, encouraged, even, to go with him?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Evangeline’s breath caught in her throat, and she began to cry. Yang frantically searched his pockets for a tissue (he had brought some for this eventuality) and handed it to her. Amarie watched, somewhat coldly.

“I should— I should have gone with him— none of this—“ Evangeline was hiccuping a little. “He asked me to go and I— I wanted— my career— and I thought— I was worried I was pregnant— and you can’t go on a ship if— and I would have gone with him if he had asked again— but then he— he said— he was worried about what people would think and— oh gods I shouldn’t have— I was so angry— but I should have gone—“ She broke off this somewhat incoherent string of thoughts, burying her face in her hands. Timidly, Yang rubbed her shoulder a little, which made her sobs worse.

“So, you love your husband,” Amarie said.

Evangeline couldn’t answer that question verbally, but she nodded.

“And you did not gleefully remain behind on Odin for the sake of Baroness Westpfale?”

“Why would I stay for her sake?” The confusion jolted Evangeline enough that she was able to speak again, at least.

Amarie raised an eyebrow. “Let’s not be so coy, Frau Mittermeyer. You don’t need to pretend to not know that—“

“She doesn’t know,” Yang cut in.

“What don’t I know?”

“Oh, how charming,” Amarie said. “You’re not aware that your close friend the Baroness Westpfale is a notorious homosexual?”

“I beg your pardon?” Evangeline asked, her face going white, then red. Her sudden anger stopped her tears in their tracks. “Princess, I may not have a title, or lands, or money, and I will have to ask your forgiveness for speaking out of turn, but I cannot allow my  _ friend  _ to be slandered—“

“Eva,” Yang said, sighing and closing his eyes. “It’s true.”

There was a moment of silence. Amarie steepled her fingers, half amused. Evangeline looked between her and Yang, mouth opening and closing silently for a second.

“Did you not know that was the reason she was banished from court?” Amarie asked.

“But— I thought you were going to get married…” Evangeline said.

“We might.” Yang shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“It’s not so complicated,” Amarie said. “And you should get married, since I went to such trouble to make that look acceptable in the first place. Frau Westpfale would certainly at least be grateful to have that veneer of acceptability.”

“Frau Westpfale has never liked me,” Yang said. “But, please, Princess— my love life, such as it is, is not exactly the business we’re here on.”

This got Amarie to chuckle, at least. “No, it’s not.” She leaned forward a little. “I’ll listen to you, at least. There’s no harm in that, though I’m not sure what you expect me to do for you. Present your case.”

So Yang began, slipping naturally into the mode of speaking that he always used as a lecturer, taking out the papers of evidence one at a time, laying them on the coffee table in front of them. He began before the beginning, talking about his suspicions for why Mittermeyer had been chosen to go to Barbarasturm— that he would be adept at dealing with tensions there because he had kept calm on Kapche-Lanka, how it would look bad if he was promoted any more for a few years, at least. Then he talked about the political situation on the planet, the local Baron von Maier ruling with a heavy hand: giving his family free rein to misbehave by throttling or bribing the local police and news, levying harsh fees on his tenants, and integrating his sons with the local fleet in order to bend the crown’s enforcement of laws to his will. As evidence, Yang produced the letter from the previous commander stationed on the planet that had been sent to Mittermeyer. Then he showed the blacked out police report, the few files that the crew of the Westberlin had been able to salvage, showing Mittermeyer using his official authority to lawfully execute von Maier. Then he let Evangeline describe how Mitttermeyer had vanished.

“So, you want me to find him for you?” Amarie asked. Her tone was neutral.

“No, Princess,” Yang said. “I know where he is.”

“Oh?”

“Your relative, Baron Flegel, was instructed to ‘take care of’ Rear Admiral Mittermeyer,” Yang said. He rubbed his head. “Rear Admiral von Reuenthal—“

“Count Marbach’s grandson?”

“Yes, Princess.”

Amarie nodded. “What is he doing?”

“He has found where Rear Admiral Mittermeyer is being held,” Yang said. How Reuenthal had actually managed to do this was not quite clear to Yang, but he was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Reuenthal had said that he had gotten this information without Baron Flegel’s knowledge, which might actually be a positive for them. Of course, he had also said that if Flegel took one step towards the prison where Mittermeyer was, Reuenthal would not hesitate to destroy him. Yang honestly couldn’t blame him.

“Oh?”Amarie asked.

Yang pulled another piece of paper out of his folder and slid it across the table to Amarie. It was a copy of the transfer order, signed by Baron von Maier, that gave Flegel control of Mittermeyer’s person, and authorized his stay inside a private prison on the outskirts of the city. Mittermeyer’s name was not on the document.

“And you know that this is Rear Admiral Mittermeyer how?”

Yang slid another piece of paper across the table. This was a transfer order of several guards from a military prison nearby to this private installation, and it was signed specifically by Fleet Admiral Muckenburger. It was an ordinary transfer, nothing that would have raised eyebrows, and thus it was accessible quasi-publically, within the Ministry of War, anyway. 

“Muckenburger has some interest in keeping him alive, at least for now. That’s to prevent anything too terrible from happening.”

“Too terrible?”

“They would probably stop someone from killing him outright,” Yang said. “But they might allow torture. It depends on how much revenge Muckenburger thinks Flegel will allow.”

Evangeline took in a choked inhale of breath.

“So, you know where he is, and you know very well what the political situation is. What, exactly, do you think that you want me to do?”

“Princess, you are a relation to the von Maiers by marriage, and you are also the kaiser’s daughter. You have a unique position, and no small ability to resolve this situation without throwing the whole relationship between the crown, the fleet, and the colonies into chaos.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But you must remember that I am also a married woman, and I have duties not just to the crown, but to my husband. And my husband is affronted at this attack on his family.”

Evangeline spoke up. “Princess, that is why we have come to you. From one married woman to another: I have no choice but to beg you for my husband’s life.”

Amarie considered this for a second. “And if I refuse? You surely have some second plan.”

“I suspect that Rear Admiral von Reuenthal will challenge Baron Flegel to a duel,” Yang said. “And while that may not save Rear Admiral Mittermeyer’s life, it would certainly cost Baron Flegel’s.”

“Hmm,” Amarie said. “And why would Rear Admiral von Reuenthal do such a thing? He must be aware that it would cost him his career. The disgraced grandson of a count cannot simply kill a baron, even if he is doing it within the strictures of a duel.”

“The bond of friendship between them is stronger than any attachment that Rear Admiral Reuenthal has towards his own career,” Yang said. “Perhaps even stronger than his attachment to his own life. Years ago, Reuenthal risked his life to save Mittermeyer on Kapche-Lanka. He would do it again.”

“And you, Commander von Leigh? What price are you willing to pay for your friend?”

“My career is also worth far less to me than the life of my friend,” Yang said. “I would hope that this is clear.”

“And you, Frau Mittermeyer?”

“I would storm that prison myself, if it were within my power, Princess.”

Amarie laughed. “A spirited little group you have.” Evangeline’s lips tightened. Amarie raised her hand. “I will help you,” she said. “Not because it is politically expedient, and not because Frau Westpfale begged me to help you, and not because you are a married woman who is attempting to tug on my heartstrings, but because I do suspect that my husband would be far more upset should Rear Admiral Reuenthal murder his favorite nephew, rather than some distant relation he has never met.”

Evangeline choked out a relieved breath. “Thank you, Princess.”

Amarie’s voice was dry. “It will not be without consequence, I’m afraid. My husband will not be happy with me for acting without him.”

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Yang said.

“Is it?” Amarie asked, raising an eyebrow. “Well, no matter. We shall see what those consequences are in time, I suppose.” She stood. “Come. We will go find your friend. I’m sure it won’t take very long.”

* * *

They didn’t make it to the prison. 

Yang and Evangeline were in the back seat of a sporty car owned by Princess Amarie. The princess was sitting in the passenger seat as her driver took them out of the capital and toward the private prison. The storm clouds had broken open into a torrential rainstorm, and the long, single lane road surrounded by tall pine trees that led to the prison was flooded in places.

The road they were trying to turn on was the kind that was so skinny that only one car could fit on it at a time, and thus had a signal at each end, indicating when the road was clear. The signal was currently red, and so the princess’s car was stopped, idling second in a line of four vehicles, waiting for the light to change. The passengers of the car sat in a stiff silence, and time ticked by.

“How long does it take for a road to clear?” Amarie muttered under her breath. “I was really hoping not to spend all day on this.”

The red signal stubbornly refused to change.

“Maybe the light’s broken,” Evangeline suggested.

“They certainly seem to think that,” Yang said, pointing at the car in front of them, who had given up waiting, and was beginning to move down the path despite the fact that the light hadn’t changed.

Amarie sighed, watching the car in front of them disappear into the pines. Behind them, the two other cars started beeping.

“Do you think we should go?” Amarie asked the driver.

“If you like, m’lady,” the driver said. “I am certain that I will be able to back out, should we get stuck.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said. “Drive on, then.”

So they started moving again down the narrow path. The driver sensed Amarie’s impatience and sped up, until they were on the tail of the car in front of them, who then also sped up. It was a good thing that the forward car put some distance between them, because from what felt like out of nowhere, almost as though it had emerged from the pine trees at the head of the curve rather than from the road itself, came another car, moving too fast to stop, which careened into the front car with a sickening crunch, the crackling sound of grass and the screeching twist of metal loud over the sound of the rain.

Three things happened simultaneously after that: Evangeline screamed, loudly; Amarie’s car came to a hard stop, whipping Yang’s head forward into the seat in front of him; and the cars coming up the road behind them laid on their horns in anger at the sudden stop, apparently not able to see the wreckage. Amarie was pulling out her phone and dialing the emergency services, but it didn’t appear to be necessary, as the drivers and passengers of both cars were climbing out.

The drivers of both cars approached each other and started yelling. The tone of their words was audible, even if the words themselves were not. Both sides were aggrieved, and both sides were blocking the road.

Evangeline’s hands were gripping the shoulders of the seat in front of her with white knuckles. Yang put his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. “It looks like everything’s fine,” he said. “My father always said that the best kind of crash was one you can walk away from, and they all seem alright.”

Evangeline shook her head. “Just startled me, is all.”

“Mmm,” Amarie said. “But since they don’t seem intent on calling someone to move this, then I will. There’s no way we can go around, can we?”

“I don’t know, m’lady,” the driver said. “They’re standing in the road. I wouldn’t want to hit them.”

She laughed a little, holding her phone up to her ear. “It wouldn’t be something worse than what’s happened in their day already.” As Amarie got on the phone with the police to report the incident, she wiped off the front window to read the plates to them. When she did, Evangeline’s face grew pale. She waited until Amarie had hung up to speak.

“I think that’s my car.” Her voice was shaky.

“What?” Yang and Amarie said simultaneously.

“J843BU, you said. That’s my car. Well, it’s the one that Wolf drives, but it’s—“

Amarie craned her neck to look back at Yang. “Any explanations, Commander von Leigh?”

Yang scratched his head. “None that I really like,” he said. 

They had been ignoring the commotion on the road while Amarie spoke to the police, but now Yang paid closer attention to it. The argument seemed to have taken a turn, and the two drivers were walking away from the wreck, down the road, and drawing their guns, holding them in their hands. At least, that was what it looked like they were doing; it was very hard to tell through the thick sheets of rain that were falling.

“Who is the driver of that car, then?” Amarie asked. “Because it looks like he’s about to fight a duel. An illegal one. It will be pretty amusing for the police to show up to stop that.”

“They won’t be able to show up,” Yang said, agitated. “Those people leaving behind us are blocking the road.”

Amarie laughed. “What a mess. You sound unhappy.”

“I think that’s Reuenthal,” Yang said. They watched as the two duelists lined up back to back, and one of the men by the side of the road started counting, loud enough for them to hear now. 

“Eins!” The men took long strides away from each other.

Amarie took out her phone, opened the camera, and zoomed in on the face of the duelist facing their direction. Her brow furrowed.

“Zwei!”

The men took another step forward, and Amarie fumbled with her seatbelt, then the door of the car, getting immediately soaked in the torrential rain. Yang followed her out, and Evangeline followed him.

“Drei!”

“Thomas von Flegel, you come here right this instant!” Amarie’s face was incandescently wrathful, and her voice was powerful enough to pierce the air, interrupting the duel completely. The two men who were overseeing it yelled at Flegel and (it certainly was Reuenthal) Reuenthal to stop. Reuenthal halted in his tracks and turned around, watching the affair from afar. 

Baron Flegel jogged through the rain towards the princess, then bowed. “Princess Amarie— I did not expect to see you here.”

“And what exactly are you doing here?” Her hands were on her hips. “Because it looks to me as though you were about to engage in an illegal duel.”

Yang glanced down at Flegel’s hand, which did have a gun in it. He hastily tucked it into the holster behind his back. “No, m’lady,” he said.

“Then please, my dear nephew, tell me what exactly you were doing here, in the rain.”

Flegel pointed behind him. “That man destroyed my car, and refused to give me satisfaction for it.”

“It’s a car,” Amarie said. “You can buy another. What would your poor mother say if you lost your life over something so stupid?”

“Princess, please don’t insinuate that—“

“You were about to duel with blasters,” she said, staring him down. “Do you think I don’t know what that ends up looking like? Your mother would kill you if he didn’t.”

“We weren’t dueling, Princess,” Flegel said.

Amarie leaned towards him. “You may not have been before, but you certainly aren’t now.”

“You can’t just—“

“If you want to duel him, offer a formal challenge and file it! My husband doesn’t need you getting associated with illegal duels. Gods, Thomas. Have you used your brain once in your life?”

He scowled at her, but she had far greater social capital than he did, and so he had no actual rebuke. He looked behind her at Yang and Evangeline.

“What are you doing here?” Flegel asked Amarie.

“I was paying a social visit,” Amarie said.

“To a prisoner?”

“Yes.”

“On whose behalf?” Flegel’s eyes were narrowed. It was clear that he had no idea who Yang and Eva were, which made the situation somewhat easier.

“On my own. And I could ask the same thing of you.”

“A favor for someone,” Flegel said. “But I was unable to take care of it, since I ended up in an accident.”

“I see,” Amarie said. “And what kind of favor was it, that necessitated bringing blasters to a prison.”

“I am well within my rights to carry a weapon,” Flegel said, narrowing his eyes. “Who are you escorting? Commander something or other?”

“Commander von Leigh, and Evangeline von Kolsraush.” The lie fell off Amarie’s tongue without hesitation. To her credit, Evangeline didn’t blink. Yang kept his own surprise at the lie to himself. Amarie seemed to have decided that it was better to not invite any questions from Flegel about the Mittermeyer affair, so she had to come up with an alternate excuse. Even if Flegel didn’t believe it, he didn’t have the social standing to outright oppose his uncle’s wife and the kaiser’s daughter.

“And what business does a member of the Lichtenlade clan have in a place like this?”

Evangeline put a weak smile on her face. “A childhood friend of mine has run into some social difficulties,” she said. “Princess Amarie has been generous enough to offer her services as a mediator.”

Flegel seemed to be resisting the urge to snort. “And Commander so-and-so?”

“I’m borrowing him from the Baroness Westpfale,” Amarie said. “As security.”

“Security? He’s not even carrying a sidearm.”

“Not everyone feels the need to walk into a prison armed to the teeth, my dear,” Amarie said. “Besides, he’s a teacher, so he doesn’t carry a sidearm, but that means he has plenty of time to spare. My husband can’t loan me officers on a moment’s notice, you see.”

“I’m not sure I do, but perhaps I am simply blind, Princess.”

“Indeed,” she said. “Well, Thomas, it appears as though we are standing here in the rain, for no good reason. You and your friends should get in my car, and my driver will take you home.”

“Princess!” Flegel was annoyed.

“My husband would think it rude of me to abandon my nephew here in the rain. I have business here, and I can call another car when I’m done.”

“But you’ll surely catch cold, walking this way in the mud,” he said. “My uncle would be unhappy if I allowed that to happen.”

“Nonsense,” Amarie said. “He trusts me to make my own decisions about my health, and many other things, besides.” She smiled grimly at him. “Go home, Thomas. If you have business here, it can surely wait until tomorrow.”

“The same could be said for you,” Flegel said.

“I’m afraid Fraulein Kolsrausch’s issue is urgent,” Amarie said. “In fact, I really don’t have time to waste arguing with you. Go home, Thomas.”

“I hope that you are correct,” he said.

“About what?”

“How much my uncle trusts you.”

Amarie smiled grimly. “That’s certainly not a fair insinuation to make when I’m only trying to be generous to you.” She turned to her driver, still in the car with the door open. “Please take Baron Flegel and his friends home. I will arrange another ride for myself.”

“Yes, m’lady,” the driver said.

“Fraulein Kolsrausch, a pleasure to meet you,” Flegel said. He extended his hand, and Evangeline offered hers. He kissed it, a slimy expression on his face. “Please give the minister of state my greetings.”

“I will, thank you, Baron.”

Flegel gestured to his friends, and they all got into the car. Amarie watched with her hands on her hips as it drove away down the street. Yang could have collapsed in relief.

“Will the real Evangeline von Kolsraush be upset that I’ve stolen her identity?” Evangeline asked. Yang didn’t wait around to hear the answer; he jogged down the street to where Reuenthal was standing, looking vaguely annoyed. He had at least put his gun away.

“I was looking forward to killing that man,” Reuenthal said.

“Do not let Princess Amarie hear you say that,” Yang said. “He’s her nephew.”’

“It would have done her a favor, to prune her family tree. I didn’t need to be rescued.”

Yang shook his head and said, “You might not, but Mittermeyer does.” Amarie and Evangeline were coming over.

“Introduce me to the man who was about to kill my nephew,” Amarie demanded. Some of her well-controlled pleasantness that she had been using to deal with her nephew had worn off, and she seemed as annoyed as her rain-drenched image would imply.

“Princess Amarie, this is Rear Admiral Oskar von Reuenthal,” Yang said.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Princess,” Reuenthal said. Amarie offered him her hand, and he bowed and kissed it in his usual way.

“How much of a walk is it to the prison?” Amarie asked.

“About half a kilometer,” Reuenthal said.

“Hmph.” Amarie hiked her skirts up a little and began walking. “Let’s move. The prison might not be pleasant, but at least it won’t be so wet.”

* * *

The officials inside the prison were weirdly cagey when they saw who had shown up, and on account of what prisoner. Yang realized he had been right to try to get Amarie on his side, because she brought the full force of her personality and rank down on the prison administration. Yang had originally accompanied her into the rooms with the prison staff, but when Amarie saw the dirty looks that he was consistently getting, she had asked him to wait in the hallway with Reuenthal and Evangeline. Reuenthal was ignoring Evangeline, but Evangeline seemed to be reappraising him.

From the waiting room outside the prison warden’s office, they could hear Amarie’s shouting as clear as day.

“He is imprisoned here under the authority of Baron von Maier,” she said at one point. “Baron von Maier is part of my husband’s family, and I am speaking for both my husband and my father when I ask that you release this man.”

And later, “If you need me to call Fleet Admiral Muckenburger, I will. But I suggest you do not make me do that. If he were imprisoned under military authority, he would be in a military prison, awaiting court martial. Yes, I understand that he sent guards here. But I think it’s clear that they were to protect Rear Admiral Mittermeyer, rather than the other way around.”

“What do you mean, protect him from what?” Amarie asked. “Protect him from whatever you’re trying to stop me from seeing, Warden.”

“If you will not give me the time of day, I will walk through those doors and find him myself. And you can complain to my father about that!”

It was in a momentary lull in the shouting that Evangeline finally spoke. “How did you take Wolf’s car?”

Silently, Reuenthal reached into his pocket, pulled out his ring of keys, and twisted one off its jump ring. He tossed it to Evangeline, who caught it. “I’ll pay you for it,” Reuenthal said.

Evangeline was turning the key over in her hands, then took out her own purse to compare it to her keys. It lined up perfectly against her house key. “Should I ask you why you have a copy of my house key?”

“No,” Reuenthal said, voice completely dry and flat. Evangeline looked at Yang, who was fortunately rescued from having to say anything by Princess Amarie storming out of the office.

“The warden will not cooperate, but he will not stop us, either,” she said. “Come.”

Reuenthal frowed at being ordered around, but that didn’t stop him from falling into step behind Amarie. It didn’t take nearly as much convincing to get past the heavy doors and into the prison itself, and from there it was a matter of being escorted through the hallways until they arrived at Mittermeyer’s cell. Strangely, the fleet guards assigned by Muckenburger were nowhere to be seen, and there was some odd sound coming from inside the cell.

“Open this door,” Amarie demanded of their escort.

“I don’t think—“ the guard stammered.

Reuenthal got in his face. “Now,” he said. His hand crept to his gun. Yang wanted to stop him, but Evangeline was clinging to his arm. The guard ducked out of Reuenthal’s way and punched a series of buttons on the pad next to the door, then swiped his badge through it.

The door swung open. 

The cell was dark, and there were two people in it. One of them was familiar, stocky and short Mittermeyer, the other towered over him by more than a foot, a giant. The giant was wielding a whip, and it was clear, in the dim light spilling in through the hallway, that Mittermeyer had been struck several times. His uniform was torn across the back in several places, and ugly, bloody wounds crossed his flesh. Still, he was on his feet, his hands cuffed behind him, and he dodged the next strike of the whip, neither he nor the giant noticing that the door had opened before the giant struck. Mittermeyer rolled to the floor and out of the way, hastily scrambling back to his feet. The giant lumbered forward.

“Wolf!” Eva cried out.

“Stop, right this instant,” Amarie said, voice shrill. 

The giant ignored the commotion at the doorway, and Mittermeyer was suddenly distracted by the voice of his wife. He looked up, which was a mistake.

The giant swung the whip again, and it was Yang and Reuenthal who both acted, judging the situation and moving in tandem. Yang dashed forward and pushed Mittermeyer out of harm’s way, though in doing so, the whip ended up caught on his own leg, sending a searing, jolting pain throughout his whole body. Yang collapsed to the floor, boneless. He hardly even noticed Reuenthal shooting the giant’s hand, causing the large man to cry out in roar and turn on Reuenthal, clutching his wounded hand to his chest.

“Stop!” Amarie said again. “In the name of the kaiser, stop!”

This finally brought the giant up short, and he realized who he was in the presence of. “Princess!” He bowed deeply. “I was expecting the young master Flegel.”

“Baron Flegel won’t be making it, I’m afraid,” Amarie said. “You should go. I will take care of this matter from here.”

“Yes, Princess,” the giant said, bowing still. “I will wait outside. I can finish this for you once you are done.”

“No need. Your services have been more than enough.” The distaste in her voice was clear, but the giant didn’t seem to notice.

“I am glad that I could satisfy, Princess,” he said.

“Leave us,” Amarie repeated. “If you require additional payment for your medical treatment, send the invoice to me. I will settle what is fair.”

“Yes, Princess.” Finally, the giant left.

Someone was pulling at Yang’s leg, or it was twitching and jerking outside of his control, an odd sensation that almost overcame the pain of it. It was Evangeline, Yang discovered, who was helping him. Reuenthal had gone over to Mittermeyer, who was slumped against the wall.

“Are you alright, Hank?” Evangeline asked. She disentangled the whip from his leg.

“Fine,” Yang said. He gently poked at his leg, which had stopped twitching, at least. He hadn’t gotten hit directly, not enough to break skin, though he thought that the electrical burn line might blister a little bit. He shook his head. “I’ve had worse.” He struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on Evangeline for a second. “Is Mittermeyer alright?”

“Herr Reuenthal is—“ Evangeline began, but Reuenthal stepped away from Mittermeyer at that moment.

“He needs medical attention,” he said. 

“Is that something that needs my attention?” Amarie asked. “Or have I served my purpose here?”

“Thank you, Princess,” Mittermeyer said, voice somewhat rough.

“Hm, well, you should thank your friend. Later, though,” Amarie said. She pulled out her phone. “I’m going to call a doctor for you, and my husband has already called a car for myself. It’s waiting outside, if you don’t need anything else.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Yang said. “I’m very much in your debt.”

“This is true.” She tapped her lip, once, twice, then said, “Commander Leigh, you come with me. Now.”

Yang looked behind him, at Reuenthal and Mittermeyer and Evangeline, then shrugged and followed Amarie out, limping a little on his wounded leg. Amarie didn’t talk as they walked, passing obsequious guards until they came to the outside of the prison.

The car outside was not a servant’s car. It was, in fact, a fleet vehicle. Yang didn’t recognize the plate, but when the driver side door opened, Yang did recognize the man who stepped out.

“You!” Captain Ansbach hissed, seeing Yang approach.

“Captain, you can fight with Commander Leigh at some other point,” Amarie said, allowing Ansbach to open the door for her. “Leigh, get in the car.”

Yang obeyed, slipping into the backseat as Ansbach and Amarie took the front. As soon as everyone was settled, the car screeched off down the road, moving inappropriately fast for such a narrow lane, Yang thought. He studied Ansbach in the mirror as they drove. He looked pretty much the same as he had when they had graduated: the same short, dark hair, the same sallow face, the same narrowed eyes when he looked at Yang.

It was clear that Ansbach wanted to say many things to Yang, none of them pleasant, but once again, the princess’s presence was rescuing Yang, so he was able to spend the car ride in peace, of a sort. His leg hurt like hell. He almost wished that Ansbach was yelling at him, because at least that would take his mind off of it. He tried to wonder about how Mittermeyer and Reuenthal and Evangeline were getting on, back at the prison, but couldn’t really keep his thoughts focused, since he was sure that they were fine.

For the second time that day, though now in significantly worse condition, Yang arrived back at the Braunschweig estate.

Amarie immediately disappeared somewhere, leaving Yang and Ansbach alone in what seemed to be a room that was set up for Duke Braunschweig’s use— a drawing room of some kind. He suspected it belonged to the duke because the heavy furniture and dark walls did not seem to be to Amarie’s taste.

Ansbach glared at him for a while as Yang sat down on one of the sofas and ignored him.

“I can’t believe that you, of all people, have survived,” Ansbach finally said. “And that you and your friends are still causing trouble.”

“I’m not causing trouble,” Yang said mildly, his eyes closed and head tilted back. “And Mittermeyer did nothing wrong. Anyone who looks half closely can see that.”

Ansbach scowled. “You would think that people would be tired of dealing with you, by now.”

“Perhaps they are,” Yang said. “But I would have to hear that from them, rather than you, to know that it’s the case.”

“How’s your leg?”

“Fine, thanks for asking,” Yang said.

“It doesn’t look fine.”

“Oh, you’re actually concerned? I thought you were making a joke about the time you shot me.”

“It’s funny, I remembered you being rather more subtle when we went to school together.”

“I’m not sure what gave you that impression,” Yang said. “I’m too lazy for subtleties.” 

“I never would have believed you if you said that years ago,” Ansbach said.

“Why not?”

“You claim to be lazy, but you sat at the top of the class for four straight years.”

Yang shrugged. “But you believe me now?”

“I’ve seen your career trajectory. There isn’t much left of it.”

“I hope you’ve enjoyed surpassing me,” Yang said.

Ansbach barked out a laugh. “I would, if it wasn’t so sad.”

“What’s sad about it? I enjoy teaching.”

“I at least thought you had potential, back then.”

“And that’s why you tried to kill me?”

“Watching you squander it— I’m not sure if I should be grateful that you didn’t die back then or not.”

Yang just shook his head. “I don’t care about my career.”

“Just like you didn’t care about rank.”

“Ansbach, if you had found a way to take the number two spot, you could have had it with my blessing.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted your blessing.”

Yang chuckled a little. Their conversation was cut short as the door to the room opened and Duke Braunschweig entered. Yang stood, and both he and Ansbach saluted.

“Thank you for taking care of my guest,” Braunschweig said to Ansbach. “You’re dismissed.” Ansbach nodded and silently left the room. Braunschweig sat, then gestured for Yang to do the same on the couch opposite him.

“My wife tells me that you convinced her to go behind my back because you had something valuable to offer me in trade for Rear Admiral Mittermeyer’s life.”

Yang hadn’t known that this was the way that Amarie was going to spin the situation to her husband— he had to wonder what that conversation had been like— and he had also half expected Braunschweig to spend at least thirty seconds on social pleasantries before jumping in to the meat of things. Maybe it was good that he didn’t, because Yang would have found it difficult to concentrate on pleasantries.

“I do,” he said, though he wasn’t sure if Braunschweig would accept it.

“Then tell me,” Braunschweig said. “Because what you say to me in the next thirty seconds will determine if you live to see the end of the year.”

Yang tilted his head. “Mittermeyer’s death was worth that much to you?”

“No,” Braunschweig said. “I don’t care about that. Rear Admiral Mittermeyer was a problem that my relatives gave to me, and although it would have been advantageous to have things go according to plan, I am capable of adapting to changed circumstances. What I do care about, however, is keeping my family in line.”

“Princess Amarie is her own woman.”

“It would be one thing,” Braunschweig said, “if this had been a matter concerning her side of the family. However, it concerned mine, and she overstepped her bounds in my name, on your behalf. I cannot have people believing that they can manipulate her, so either you give me something in fair trade, or you pay with your life. It’s simple enough to understand.”

“I see.” Yang looked over Braunschweig’s shoulder as he considered what he was about to say. “In some ways, I am prepared to offer you my life.”

“Some ways.”

“I’ll join your staff,” Yang said. “Ask for my transfer; I’ll step down from my position at the IOA at the end of the year.”

“Why would I want that? A commander for a rear admiral seems like a very bad trade.”

Yang tilted his head. “You should ask Ansbach if he thinks it’s a good trade or not. I believe he will agree with me, even if he wouldn’t want to admit it. And I get the sense that you trust him.”

“I do. But you haven’t explained why I would want you, in particular.”

“Kaiser Friedrich is not going to live much longer,” Yang said.

“That’s a dangerous thing to say.”

“Everyone can see that his health is declining. I give him maybe another seven years. Ten, at the outside.”

“I wouldn’t call that ‘soon’.”

“He’s not going to name a successor.”

“And how would you know that?”

“I advised him not to,” Yang said. “Because he thought that it would prevent any more deaths in the family.” He looked steadily at Braunschweig.

“I did not kill Ludwig.”

“I know,” Yang said, then looked away. “But someone did. And if he named Elizabeth as heir, she might be next.”

“And what does any of this have to do with you?”

“Elizabeth has a strong claim to the throne,” Yang said. “But not an uncontestable one. There is going to be a power struggle, when the kaiser dies, and you’re going to want me on your side.”

“Why?”

“I would hope that it doesn’t come to this,” Yang said, “but in the event that it does, I know how to take down Iserlohn Fortress.” Yang was worried that he might have to justify that claim, but Braunschweig just nodded. “And whoever controls that fortress has their boot on the throat of the rest of the empire.”

“Why?”

“Under the best case scenario, it’s simply a useful thing to have. A token of where power lies.”

“That’s not a very convincing best case scenario.”

“Yes, the worst case scenario is rather moreso, I’m afraid.”

“Then tell me.”

“I don’t think that you, or Littenheim, or whoever is backing Erwin Josef’s claim to the throne— there’s certainly going to be someone— individually have enough power to take the throne, not without one of these groups bowing and joining up with another. The kaiser isn’t going to name an heir, so there’s no clear way the government and the lesser nobles will throw their support. It’s going to be a bloodbath.”

“Yes, that’s well understood. What does Iserlohn have to do with it?”

“You don’t see?”

“Don’t patronize me. You’re begging for your life, if you’d forgotten that.”

Yang shrugged. “Whoever controls Iserlohn could sue for peace with the rebels,” he said. “Declare themselves the rightful ruler, beg for help from the rebels to end the civil war and restore the throne, form a coalition fleet, and take the capital by force, easily.”

“That would be—“

Yang waved his hand. “Dishonorable, a shell of a government, the last straw that breaks the back of the Goldenbaum dynasty, yes, I’m aware,” he said.

“Then why would I want you to enact this plan?”

“Because if you don’t, someone else will. If you want your daughter to be kaiserin, and not dead, you need to start thinking about this now.” Yang suspected that the Earth Church would not be above trying this plan. He wouldn’t even be surprised if they had a cell of agents inside of Iserlohn already, ready to take it if the time came.

“This sounds like a threat.”

“I’m in no position to be making threats, sir,” Yang said. “I’m making you an offer. It’s a generous one, all things considered. Myself, in exchange for your wife’s generosity. The future, in exchange for Rear Admiral Mittermeyer’s life.”

Braunschweig was silent for a second, considering. He shook his head, and Yang’s heart sank for a second. “It’s a public trade, I suppose,” Braunschweig said. “I somehow doubt you’ll be as useful as you claim you will be, though.”

“No one knows what the future holds,” Yang said.

The duke nodded. “Then fine. I’ll accept that trade. But Leigh,” he said, “if you ever go behind me like this again, I will kill you. Without hesitation.”

“Yes, sir.”

Branschweig waved his hand in dismissal, and Yang headed out, eventually to the outside of the Braunschweig estate. 

The rain had cleared, and the night air was cool, with stars just peeking through the slowly loosening cloud cover. Yang stared up at the stars, feeling very much like each point of light was the bright head of an arrow, coming towards him, very far away, but coming close, faster and faster.

He had cast his lot in with Duke Braunschweig. He had chosen a side in the inevitable, messy struggle. He hated them all, but he had picked one because of his own personal benefit. The thought turned his stomach, and he was half tempted to change his mind, to go back in and just tell Braunschweig to kill him.

He had been able to ignore who he was working for while he was at the IOA, and he had been able to justify his previous involvement in Iserlohn by saying that he was saving lives. This, or what was coming, was a step beyond that. It was more than just a change in career, he thought. He was going to have to admit to who he was really serving— himself, to stay alive; his friends, to keep them safe; Duke Braunschweig, in exchange; and, at the top of it all, the Goldenbaum dynasty, that tower of bones. He had just agreed to add to the pile.

He could lie to himself and pretend that this was his opportunity to make the Goldenbaum dynasty better, a chance to put someone on the throne who could be a good ruler— and maybe Elizabeth would be a good kaiserin, he didn’t know— but no matter how much he repeated that to himself, it didn’t change the fact that no matter how just and good the hands that held the power were, it was wrong for that power to be in one person’s hands, regardless.

And yet he was here, offering to aid in the continuation of that power, the passing of it from one hand to another, because— what was the alternative? He understood now, better than he had before, the sense that the Goldenbaum dynasty was something that would continue. It might have felt to him once that it was moving along only under its own momentum, and that someday it would be crushed by its own weight, but Yang could see now how everyone was participating in keeping it going. The delicate balance between the crown, the fleet, the nobles, the people— everyone who had power was clinging to it, or trying to get more, and the easiest way to do that was within this system. Refusing to perpetuate it would mean more than anyone was willing to admit. 

As he trudged down the path, away from the house, towards the street, Yang couldn’t stop turning all of it over in his head. Every step he took felt like another rung on the ladder of bones. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’ve made it. We’re finally here. I hope you’ve enjoyed your trip on noodle’s wild ride. (Or perhaps you are all saying, “Let me off of noodle’s wild ride!”)
> 
> Okay here are some random thoughts in no particular order.
> 
> \- lol. @ magdalena. I wish she could have been more in this chapter but there was no reason for her to be, and having too many people in scenes is confusing.
> 
> \- still not sure how I feel about this chapter overall but I hope you like it anyway
> 
> \- reuenthal and mittermeyer obviously both have keys to the other’s house. How much use they get is debatable but they’ve been doing variations of that kind of nonsense since they were in school so i just thought it was entertaining to have them continue
> 
> -reuenthal stole mittermeyer’s car for the sole reason that he didn’t have his own, and mittermeyer would /probably/ be okay with it, on account of using it to purposefully delay flegel and/or kill him in order to stop him from killing mittermeyer. Is this too convoluted? Maybe but honestly I just wanted to have reuenthal do something absurd and fun
> 
> -Bronner skillfully manipulated kircheis in this chapter :) he absolutely could have just sent that information directly to yang :) but instead he played on kircheis’s known loyalty to yang :) in order to get him to, well, you know :)
> 
> \- we’ve started to wave goodbye to canon events, clearly. Are you surprised that I’m having yang ally with braunschweig? Lol. The earth church is /not/ going to be happy about this.
> 
> -yang is perhaps making the fatal mistake of “caring too much about iserlohn”
> 
> ANYWAY I should shut up. This brings us to the end of this part! I’ll be back soon for the next one, with Reinhard and co in the alliance, in Lighting out for the Territories. I really hope you have enjoyed this story so far <3
> 
> Thank you to Lydia and Em for the beta read! Find me @javert on tumblr and @natsinator on twitter.. Original fiction @ bit.ly/arcadispark and bit.ly/shadowofheaven


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